[6/17/2011] Preview: Berg's "Wozzeck" (1) -- introducing Marie (continued)

Katarina Dalayman as Marie and Alan Held as Wozzeck at the Met, 2005


HERE'S THE WHOLE OF MARIE'S ACT I SOLO SCENE

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act I, Scene 3 beginning

[NOTE: This is the singing translation by Richard Stokes used in the Chandos English-language recording.]

Scene 3. Marie's room. Evening. Marie stands with her child on her arm at the window.

MARIE [speaks]: Tschin-bum, tschin-bum, bum, bum, bum!
[The military band approaches.]
Can you hear, boy? They're coming.
[The band, headed by the DRUM MAJOR, comes into the street before MARIE's window.]
MARGRET [in the street, looks through the window and says to MARIE]: What a man! Built like a tree!
MARIE [through the window to MARGRET]: Look at him -- as proud as a lion!
[The DRUM MAJOR greets MARIE, who waves to him.]
MARGRET: You little flirt! We're not used to that from you!

[Quasi trio]

MARIE [sings to herself]: Our soldiers, our soldiers, what handsome creatures! [Stops singing.]
MARGRET [still spoken through the window]: You see! Your eyes are smoldering!
MARIE: And what's that to you? Take your own eyes to the Jew and have them polished -- perhaps then you could sell them as two bright little buttons!
MARGRET: Why -- you prim little maid! I'm respectable; but we all know that y ou can stare your way through seven pairs of leather trousers!
MARIE [shouts at her]: Bitch!
[Slams the window. She is alone with the child. The military band is suddenly inaudible as the window is closed.]
[Flaring up] Come, my boy! Never mind what they say! [Takes the child in her arms.] You are just a bastard child [sits] and give your mother such pleasure with your sweet bastard little face! [She rocks the child.] Hush-a-bye baby! . . .

[Lullaby]

What will you do now, poor lamb?
You have a child but no man!
Ah, why worry, poor mite?
I'll sing through the live-long night.
Hush-a-bye baby, my darling boy,
nobody cares about us!
Johnny, go saddle your horses now,
fill up their troughs to the brim.
Oats simply are far too rough,
no water clean enough.
Purest, coolest wine it must be.
[She notices that the child is asleep.]
Purest, coolest wine it must be!

[in English] Josephine Barstow (s), Marie; Jean Rigby (ms), Margret; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Daniel, cond. Chandos, recorded July 1-18, 2002

And here's the scene in the original German -- starting earlier, going back into the orchestral interlude from the previous scene -- from the first stereo recording of Wozzeck, conducted by Karl Böhm, still my favorite recording of the opera.

Evelyn Lear (s), Marie; Alice Oelke (ms), Margret; Orchestra of the Deutsche Opera Berlin, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded March-Apr. 1965


IN TOMORROW NIGHT'S PREVIEW --

As noted, we'll meet Wozzeck himself, in the opera's opening scene. Then Sunday we'll hear a tantalizing (I hope!) bit more of Wozzeck.


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