How should Wozzeck be staged and acted? Perhaps it is prudent to consider the composer’s opinion, noted down after the experience of several of the early productions (the italics are mine):

“Not only is a precise knowledge of the Büchner drama assumed, but also of the music, at least so far as its character and its language, its dramatic style, is concerned. In spite of this unconditional requirement, the designer will be left sufficient scope for applying his own manner and style to the task. And this is so even if a realistic presentation prevails throughout, as I think necessary, so that an immediate and unambiguous recognition  and overall view of the place in which each scene is set is assured.”

In other words, the composer wanted the audience to remain anchored in the easily recognized everyday world, in which the abnormal, bizarre, and brutal events of the drama occur, and in which the objects and atmospheres of the various scenes’ locations are sharply defined, rather than in an environment that is itself abnormal, bizarre, and brutal, and over which some emblematic unifying element rules. He specifies the advantages of some of these scenic contrasts, and makes a qualified exception to the realistic scheme for Act 3, Scene 3, the “low tavern” scene between those of the murder and the drowning. He also writes of the uses of the curtain (the principal one at the close of each act, secondary ones or blackouts during the interludes), and of the exact moments, indicated in the score, when the stage world must disappear and re-appear relative to the music of the interludes. Granted that we may find Berg’s articulations, both musical and theatrical, overly microdetermined, still—why would we be at pains to follow one set but not the other? The answer is: because we have regressed far from a theatrical ethic according to which creators are allowed to set the interpretive boundaries within which interpreters are content with “sufficient scope for applying [their] own manners and styles,” in which directors and designers contemplate a work to discover themselves in it, and not it in themselves; and in which the musical and theatrical elements of production are considered an integral unit.

It is part of the critical imperative to approach a new work, a  new production, a new performance with “an open mind.” That is not actually possible unless the critic knows absolutely nothing about the new object of evaluation, or indeed any others similar to which he might compare it, in which case he is not qualified to be a critic. Still, we all try to keep our minds open at least in the sense that we are willing to be surprised, for better or worse, and perhaps revise our previous opinions of the artists involved. With respect to William Kentridge, I can’t lay claim to an open mind in even that sense. Not only did I see his previous Met productions (of Shostakovich’s The Nose and Berg’s Lulu); I’ve also read by and about him and his operatic work, including this production, fairly extensively, and heard descriptions and opinions of this Wozzeck from people who’d already seen it. Except for the many details of just how this moment looked or how that moment went, I was quite certain about what I’d be getting in exchange for my ticket purchase for the evening of January 22, the last performance of the run, and about what, on the whole, I’d think of it. I’ve seldom been so right, and no, it’s not confirmation bias.