Peter Mattei is a thoroughly admirable artist. As Amfortas and as Shishkov in The House of the Dead, he has shown nearly all the attributes that should translate well into the role of Wozzeck. Many of them did, and I have no quarrel with his expert, committed work except that at times his acting was not quite specific enough, falling into generalized indications of a nervous state. Even there, I attach little blame, since there was so little help with respect to sense of place or assigned activities (e.g., talking at The Captain from a distance while setting up a slide show, instead of conversing close-up while shaving him, as directed in the script). He coped well with the vocal requirements, too, which is no small thing. My only dissatisfaction is with the voice itself vis-à-vis the role. There was a time, which we can trace at least as far back as John Forsell, when Scandinavian baritones presented a timbre that wasn’t necessarily fat and rich, but which had great focus and clarity and, among the lower ones, considerable power. (Joel Berglund and Sigurd Björling would be post-WW2 examples of the latter.) Mattei’s high baritone, though, is typical of the best of a more recent variety that includes Jorma Hynninen, Håken Hagegård, Ingvar Wixell, and Bo Skovus—some lighter, some heavier, with Mattei’s falling about midway among these in calibre, but all of a headier, warmer, more loosely engaged type. It’s pretty, and can access beautiful piano effects in the high range (as at “um die Tugend” in the first scene) that weightier voices can struggle with. But it hasn’t quite the natural depth and bite, the bluntness of emission, that this writing would most benefit by. The role has migrated upward, and not to its advantage.

Elza van den Heever did well, I thought, as Marie. Her voice has strength in the upper range,  and a cold quality with a bit of cut that is useful in this music. The lower octave has no distinctive quality, but is present enough. As an actress, she was assertive and alert. In this interpretation—whether her own or her director’s—Marie doesn’t exactly succumb to the Drum Major, but pulls him into her room by his belt after her initial resistance. Not sure I like the choice, but she did it with good appetite. Given the puppet and its handler, she had no opportunity to develop the relationship, now loving, now sorely irritated, now guilt-burdened, with her son.

Among the others, I was impressed by Richard Bernstein’s handling of the First Apprentice’s difficult drunken sermon in the beer garden scene, once he got free of the absurd upstage cabinet that had previously been The Doctor’s office and into the open where the voice could resound. This cramped space also inhibited Christian Van Horn in his scene with Wozzeck. He has a basso cantante of good quality, and vocalized the role securely, but with little of the crispness and relish for the language, the point-scoring, that makes the character leap to life. I was disappointed in Gerhard Siegel’s Captain. He has the vocal equipment for the role, but simply howled his way through it in a gratuitously ugly fashion, and his physical characterization consisted mostly of repetitious flailings. Andrew Staples sang and spokesang a clean Andres with a voice on the slender side for the part. Christopher Ventris didn’t make much impression as the Drum Major, but, again, the staging undercut him.