Marie is not designated by Berg as a Sprechstimmerin, and I’m not sure why not. After her raucous opening mélodrame dialogue with Margret, according to the score she sings throughout the rest of Act 1, though sometimes in settings where thrown-away speech is the easiest way out. But when we arrive at the third scene of Act 2 (with Wozzeck, on the street), she is suddenly proclaiming in a Sprechstimme that carries her as far up as the high C#, at triple-forte. And at the opening of Act 3, the famous Bible-reading scene, her recitations from Scripture are marked as Sprechgesang, alternating with her sung expressions of self-lacerating remorse. Here as elsewhere, Berg gives nuanced instructions atop the Sprechgesang notations—”gesprochen” or “etwas gesungen,” “ganz gesungen,” etc., and one follows hard on another, so that an uneasily shifting continuity is created. (In one phrase, “Und weil es Niemand mehr hatt’ auf der Welt,” every note is spokesung except the last, “Welt,” fully sung on the upper F.) The spokesung lines begin on D; thus, on the upper edge of the normal female speaking range, which is to say, in singing terms, the chest register. But they immediately climb a fifth, into the most vulnerable part of all but the most secure of soprano voices, and soon perch on the upper G, piano, and eventually reach A-flat, also at piano. In this brief scene there are also phrases, marked “mit etwas Gesangstimme,” that climb up through the break from the low G, and purely sung writing that extends from low A to the high C. A few easing options are indicated, though in terms of vocal difficulty, why at one challenging spot and not another is puzzling.

Sigrid Johanson, the first Marie, seems to have left few traces. I know of no recordings of her, nor even what other roles she may have sung. But what Berg’s setting of her music calls for is a penetrating voice, capable of lyrical expression, that is rock-solid throughout the range outlined above, comfortable in the atonal idiom and in Germanic stylistic habits, and in particular in command of registral transitions reminiscent of (once again) some of the actresses of the old rhetorical school, but extending that practice a full octave higher in the imitation-speech mode. She must also be a convincing actress in a basically naturalistic style, and hot enough to be the Drum Major’s choice. Among the ones I’ve seen or heard (though I love Farrell’s voice, and am sorry to have not seen Neway), I think Evelyn Lear, on the DG recording under Böhm, comes closest to these combined requirements.

Before leaving Act 3, Scene 1, we might spare a moment for the matter of religious belief in Wozzeck. Kerman, along with his many keen observations, found this scene “maudlin.” (But then, he also found the final Interlude, which I hear as a compelling apotheosis, as “in the lachrymose tradition of Gustav Mahler,” and “self-indulgent.”  He could be unsentimental to a fault.) I can’t hear it that way. Minnie teaching the Fanciulla miners their Bible lesson to some lesser Puccini inspirations—that can come off as maudlin. But Marie seeking solace to Berg’s music? Only, I think, if one finds the very idea maudlin. But where else are the arme Leut to turn? Wozzeck and Marie have absorbed instruction, and grabbed hold of the parts of it that reinforce them. When lectured by The Captain on his out-of-wedlock child, Wozzeck is able to recite, almost eloquently, from Matthew and to imagine himself, albeit bitterly, in Heaven, just as he can form at least the beginnings of an argument about the forces of natural instinct when The Doctor admonishes him on self-control. And Marie knows where to turn in the Gospels to try to assuage her sexual guilt. The pity is that though they both have more sense of a Christian God’s presence than their tormentors, their God pays not the slightest attention. If He did—if there were the faintest trace of an answer, some slim hope for redemption or salvation—then we might speak of the maudlin. Büchner and Berg deny us that.