The world premiere of WOZZECK in Berlin in 1925 was a sensation. Even though the opera was, in many respects, quite unlike anything that had been seen before, most people were instinctively aware that the composer, Alban Berg, had come up with a work that mirrored its own world – a world in which war, revolution and impoverishment had resulted in a universal feeling of dread, insecurity and despair.

The innovative quality of “Wozzeck” lies in Berg’s choice of storyline and his score. Alone the decision to make an opera of Georg Büchner’s drama fragment, which had premiered as recently as 1913, was audacious. This was a story of a man right at the bottom of the social pecking order. As the opera opens, the one source of support for the eponymous hero, Franz Wozzeck, is his relationship with his partner, Marie. As this security, too, is shaken by Marie’s infidelity, Wozzeck is driven to kill first her and then himself, leaving their child an orphan.

Mr Reuter, Berg’s “Wozzeck” is considered to mark the beginning of modern operatic music. What’s so modern about this work?
One of the key aspects is the layered nature of the musical statement being made. The operas of the 19th century often achieve their intensity of expression by bundling the collected energies as a way of getting a feeling across as powerfully as possibly. With “Wozzeck” it’s different: the music mirrors a complex and newly unfathomable world. And this is as true today as it was in 1925, when the opera was staged for the first time.

Nonetheless the eponymous hero, Franz Wozzeck, is trying to make sense of it all. Is the fact that he can find no explanation for the world what drives him to despair in the end?
Whatever the case, we see Wozzeck falling short in his attempt at analysis. Neither his conspiracy theories nor his habit of using biblical quotations to account for the ways of the world are up to the job. And along the way we are often unsure if we’re dealing with simple, natural phenomena or figments of the imagination – we are caught up in the same uncertainty as Wozzeck.

In your version is Wozzeck mad from the start?
If you ask me, we have here a very sensitive man who has not had the kind of education that would have allowed him to develop intellectually. After all, the urge to explain the world for oneself is a very positive drive. The only trouble is that in Wozzeck’s case he increasingly becomes a victim of his own urge, turning it against himself and causing him to drift off in a parallel world. Which is why, in crucial situations, he is unable to react. For instance, when he finds out that his girlfriend Marie has been deceiving him, he is incapable of confronting her on the issue. Instead, he obsesses over a possible deeper meaning to it all. Needless to say, it’s a futile quest. After all, which of us would be able to define the meaning of life?

We can approach Berg’s opera from several perspectives. Are you trying to fathom Wozzeck’s madness in terms of a real-life illness or are you picking up on the expressionistic alienation that Berg used to depict Wozzeck’s increasingly unhinged state?
Yes, the temptation is great to take the realism approach with the Wozzeck character, but that would the wrong tack, in my view. After all, this is an opera in which the singers are showing the full scope of their artistic talent. And I doubt, too, that Berg was primarily interested in presenting one man’s predicament onstage; I think he was aiming at a more universal message, which would be why he gave the opera a symphonic framework, which keeps the action at a distance.

If you look at the singers who have sung the title role in “Wozzeck”, the sheer breadth of different voices is astonishing – ranging from lyrical vocalists to bass-baritones like yourself.
That’s because Berg uses a panoply of musical forms to reflect the layered psychology inherent to the role. The singing does not stay in one register but rises and falls, fluctuating between poetic and dramatic passages. Not at all unlike Strauss’s approach to the great baritone roles in “The Woman Without a Shadow” and “Arabella”. And Berg even offers alternative solutions in the score, in case the lowest or highest notes to be sung by Wozzeck are outside the singer’s range.

Wozzeck is not just sick; he’s also right at the bottom of the social pile. I’m guessing a singer has to wholeheartedly embrace victimhood before he can play an antihero onstage.
I have to confess that gruesome stories like this kind of tweak my interest. Maybe that’s because I have a pessimistic streak. And like Wozzeck I’m always searching for meaning in life. And as an opera singer I suppose I live in a kind of parallel universe, right?