Berg: Wozzeck

In 2010, for the first time in its history, the Bolshoi Opera presented Alban Berg’s masterpiece Wozzeck. Dmitri Cherniakov’s truly historic production is now available on DVD.

The Russian director’s aim with this bold, sensitive transposition was “to highlight the hidden sorrows of a late twentieth-century man dwelling in a megalopolis.”

The redoubtably complex title role was entrusted to Austrian baritone Georg Nigl. Born in Vienna in 1972, Georg Nigl was solo soprano with the Vienna Boys Choir prior to three years as an actor at the Burgtheater in Vienna. He began training as a singer at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna in 1990, before going on to the Kammersängerin Hilde Zadek. Over the last few years he has worked with, among others, Thomas Hengelbrock and his Baltasar Neumann Ensemble, Jordi Savall and his Hesperion XXI Ensemble, and Giovanni Antonini and Luca Pianca and their Il Giardino Armonico.

American soprano Mardi Byers plays Marie. A native of Colorado, she made her international debut as Tosca in Lübeck and Elisabetta in Don Carlos in Wiesbaden and Basel. She has also sung Donna Anna and Suor Angelica at the New York City Opera, as well as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser and Ariadne in Nuremberg.

Greek conductor Teodor Currentzis directs the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra and Chorus. Artistic director of the Perm Opera and founder and musical director of the Musica Aeterna ensemble, Teodor Currentzis is now to be seen in the world’s leading venues: the Opéra de Paris, Opernhaus Zurich, Bayerische Staatsoper Munich, the Royal Opera House Covent Garden and the Teatro Real in Madrid.