Director Krzysztov Warlikowski: 'I look at Wozzeck through his son's eyes'

'The smaller the community the narrower the mind,' says Krzysztof Warlikowski. The Polish director makes his debut at De Nationale Opera this month with Wozzeck by Alban Berg. This is the second time he has taken on this iconic work of the 20th century. To this end, he draws on his own experiences during his childhood in Stettin.

It is exceptional that he accepted the invitation, says Warlikowski: "On principle, I never do the same piece twice, but Wozzeck was my first opera. I directed it 11 years ago at the Wielki Theatre in Warsaw. That was an important experience for me. After that, I did Lulu in Brussels, which gave me new insights about Alban Berg. So when De Nationale Opera asked me, I immediately seized the opportunity to show a new interpretation.'

He deviated from his principle because his views on Wozzeck totally changed: 'You have a different consciousness when you have done two operas by Berg. Wozzeck is finished, it is the first explosion of Berg's talent for opera, Lulu is much more sophisticated and modern, but remained unfinished. Having directed both works, I gradually came to realise that the role of the child is incredibly important. For me, the central question is: what will happen to the little boy?'

Mountain flirts with own daughter

Striking, given that Wozzeck's son plays only a supporting role, but Warlikowski has good reasons. 'Look at Alban Berg's biography. When he was seventeen, he had a brief but intense affair with a servant twice his age. She had a child, was bought off by the family and disappeared from Berg's life forever. Twenty-five years later, his daughter suddenly stood in front of him and asked to speak to him. Not knowing who she was, he even tried to seduce her. Only then did she reveal that he was her father.'

Warlikowski can hardly hide his disgust: 'This fact of life has been ignored by musicologists and historians for years, to my dismay. And as it turned out, he had sent her tickets to the premiere of Wozzeck, but somewhere at the back of the second balcony in the cheapest price range. Very strange and nasty. His wife also behaved nastily towards the girl.'

Guilt

The director is convinced that Berg's guilt led to two of his most prized creations. 'In his own life, he did not know how to deal with being an orphan, but he devoted two great, horrific operas to this theme. Wozzeck himself may not be an orphan, but we see from the start that his family is dysfunctional. When he kills Marie and then commits suicide, he leaves his infant son orphaned. Lulu is a young girl living on the streets who is taken in by an older man, who abuses her.'

That he had treated his own daughter so unfairly became a lifelong obsession for Berg, according to the director. 'He turned to opera to talk about his inner traumas. Take that final scene of Wozzeck! No other opera concludes with only children on stage. When they tell the little son that his mother is dead, little Wozzeck just says "hop, hop". It's traumatic; he doesn't want to know the truth. He simply cannot accept it, which is why he pretends the message does not get through to him.'

Vicious circle

Warlikowski additionally refers to the historical Johann Christian Woyzeck: 'His life was the model for the play Woyzeck by Georg Büchner, on which Berg in turn based his opera. Woyzeck had lost his parents as a small child and grew up an orphan. It is like a vicious circle. We can imagine that Wozzeck and Marie's little son will later become another criminal and murderer. Because we see what happens in his childhood.'

For the director, this inevitably leads to the question of what kind of childhood the opera hero himself had. 'Why does he stab Marie to death and what effect does this have on their little son? What is to become of him? This is a modern, almost Freudian question. How is a child affected by his upbringing, his environment, his schooling? What happened when he was three, or seven years old? I want us to ask how much we influence our children. How easy it is to deprive them of paradise when they are small.'

Lost paradise

Fervently: 'It is the only period on this planet when you are in heaven. It lasts roughly until you are seven, depending on how much your parents protect you.' That is why Warlikowski places the child prominently on stage. 'The boy is present in most scenes, even if he does not take part in the action. I want him to see how his father is treated by others, how the conflict between his parents escalates. He is a spectator, he follows what happens.'

Thus, the little boy experiences how his vulnerable father is humiliated by others and how his mother ogles the pot-bellied tambour-maître. 'Wozzeck has hallucinations, is on the verge of borderline. Marie wonders what is actually the meaning of their relationship and their child, to whom he pays no attention. Perhaps that is why she chooses the tambour-maître; perhaps he will be a better father. But during an argument with a friend, she realises she will always be a whore in the eyes of the world.'

Narrow view

And here Warlikowski gets fierce: 'I experienced this kind of mechanism myself growing up in Stettin. Not in the centre, but in the suburbs, where people think like they do in the countryside. The smaller the surroundings, the more narrow-minded the view. Everyone pointed at a certain girl on our street and called her a whore. I said: but she is incredibly nice, she is my friend. To no avail. Everyone had their judgment ready, because she had changing lovers and raised a child unmarried.'

That experience in communist Poland of the 1970s informed his views on Wozzeck helped shape it. 'For me, the opera is not so much about social inequality as it is about the difficult interpersonal relationships. - Of which little Wozzeck becomes the victim.'