Alban Berg

"The soldier Wozzeck (Christian Gerhaher) flits through a world that he is unable to decipher. The doctor torments him with absurd medical experiments; the captain humiliates and ridicules him. And Wozzeck's lover, Marie (Gun-Brit Barkmin), with whom he has a child, cuckolds him with the drum major. Wozzeck becomes a murderer, stabbing Marie to death. Georg Büchner's drama fragment, on which Alban Berg based his first opera, is an unflinching case study of social injustice and human suffering. But it is also a grotesque piece that thrives on exaggeration--and in which only a fine line separates the unfathomable from the ridiculous. Accordingly, director Andreas Homoki forgoes all realism."--Publisher's web site.

"This text is a complete phonetic transcription and detailed translation from German into English of the libretto of Alban Berg's Wozzeck. Knowledge of the International Phonetic Alphabet will be essential for any performer or scholar who utilizes this resource. While a musicologist, instrumentalist, conductor, coach, or theorist may gain insight from this resource, it was prepared with the unique and specific needs of a singer as the guiding principle of all efforts and research. A singer's translation and phonetic transcription of Wozzeck does not, as yet, exist in any format whatsoever, but this resource would enable any non-German-speaking singer the opportunity to assimilate this work in a fashion that is simply not possible now with the current available literature. While there is a great deal of musicological and musico-theoretical literature about Wozzeck available, there was - until now - neither a useful, practical translation of the opera's libretto nor a phonetic transcription of any kind of the opera's libretto. My resource meets both of these needs in one text"--