There's A Real Race In North Dakota-- But It Should Be A Slam-Dunk

Blue America is helping to raise campaign funds for 3 people seeking Senate seats this cycle-- but that doesn't mean there aren't other important races this cycle. I just never really expected that one of them would be in North Dakota. That race pits a corrupt right-wing multimillionaire and extremist freshman, Rick Berg, against a highly respected and admired former Attorney General, Heidi Heitkamp. But this is one very red state we're talking about... right? After all, in 2008 McCain beat Obama 168,601 (53%) to 141,278 (45%) and in 2010 the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse swept away 8 term incumbent Earl Pomeroy, now a sleazy corporate lobbyist. Berg beat him 129,802 (54.7%) to 106,542 (44.9%). But despite the fact that North Dakota hasn't awarded its electoral votes to a Democratic presidential candidate since LBJ (1964), the at-large House seat has been in Democratic hands since 1981. Nor have the Republicans held a North Dakota Senate seat since 1987. So maybe Heitkamp does have a chance? Now you have to take a look at who exactly Rick Berg is.

We need to go beyond the fact that he's a much-disliked landlord in a state with a lot of renters. And let's go beyond his crazy extremist stance on social issues. He's not a whit less dangerous on women's health than Todd Akin. In fact, the two have identical voting records on all roll calls relating to women and, even beyond Akin, Berg voted to make abortion in the case of rape or incest punishable with a life sentence. When he was a state legislator 5 years ago he voted to criminalize abortion as a Class AA felony, including in the case of rape or incest, voting with a minority of the state house.

Up top you can watch voters at a debate in Bismarck Wednesday booing Berg when he tried to wiggle out of a question from Heitkamp about his vote to privatize Social Security. “When you say ‘I’m going to fix it,’ you’re going to privatize it,” said Heitkamp, provoking him into a standard GOP lie. She had the goods on him because in 2005 he had introduced a resolution in the state legislature formally supporting Bush’s plan to explicitly privatize Social Security. Instead of defending his position-- which is extremely unpopular-- Berg said that this attack is “what’s wrong with Washington.” He's the Washington pol, though, not Heitkamp. And the voters at the debate knew it. The booing was loud and long.

Polling shows the race neck and neck, although one recnt poll had Heitkamp ahead by 6 points-- and over 50%. Berg's unlikable personality is hurting him even more than his extreme positions.

Political analysts in North Dakota say voters here, despite their conservative bent, often choose personalities over party politics. With fewer than 700,000 residents in the state, a candidate can win an election with just 160,000 votes, and many voters get to vet their candidates in person.

"There's an extreme value placed on face-to-face retail politics here," said Mark Jendrysik, a political-science professor at the University of North Dakota. "People really do feel bent out of shape if you don't show up at their church picnic or town parade." In that environment, said Mark Springer, an associate professor of political science at the University of Mary in Bismarck, Ms. Heitkamp has done well because she "is more of a shake-the-hands, kiss-the-babies type person."

"She seems very personable, and he seems aloof," said Julie Tello, a fourth-grade teacher in Bismarck. "She just seems like a real North Dakotan who will stand up for what we believe in."

Merle Gunlock, a 90-year-old retired rancher in Williston, said he planned to vote for Mr. Berg because "he uses a lot of common sense."

The race has another X factor: oil workers. An oil boom in the state's west has drawn thousands of workers, who can vote because North Dakota is the only state in the U.S. without voter registration. Both candidates have campaigned in the oil patch, including tours of "man camps," or dormitories for oil workers in rural areas. Both candidates, however, said they doubt many workers will come out to the polls.

Does Anyone Know What Rick Berg Is For... Other Than Himself?

"So, congratulations to Karl Rove. He's hitting a woman who was talking about overcoming breast cancer." And? Isn't that exactly the Rovian modus operandi? He takes something positive about a political opponent-- in this case well-respected North Dakota Democrat Heidi Heitkamp-- and turns it into a Rovian sewer? Isn't that what his entire career has always been about. Today Rove is spending hundreds of millions of dollars-- every cent of it from ruthless billionaires, like the Koch bothers and organized crime kingpin Sheldon Adelson-- trying to buy the American government. He'll have a tough time in North Dakota, though, where Republicans nominated an extremely unpopular political hack, Rick Berg, who just happens to be the state's biggest and most unscrupulous landlord, best known to thousands of North Dakota families as the guy who cheats them on their apartment rents.

So Berg has Rove in North Dakota trying to smear Heidi with his lies and filth. But he has his own problems. Hard core right-wing fanatics in Congress, like Steve King (R-IA) are warning mushy Republicans like Berg they'd better not abandon the GOP anti-healthcare positions.

King promised that if Republicans took control, they would undo every part of Obamacare, even popular provisions like protections for people with pre-existing conditions and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health care plans. “I don’t want to hear any talk from Republicans about preserving any aspect of it,” King declared. “It’s all or none”:

REPORTER: It seems like as a practical matter, it’d be very tough to get rid of the law if he wins a second term.

KING: I agree. This is it. The battle is enjoined and it’s about Obamacare here to November. And if we seat a majority of the United States Senate of Republicans, hold this majority in the House and elect Mitt Romney, we will undo Obamacare and all of it. I don’t want to hear any talk from Republicans about preserving any aspect of it. It just dilutes the argument. It’s all or none. This is it, we’re all in and I’m ready for that fight.

But Rick Berg, nervous that many North Dakota voters, especially independents and moderate Republicans, appreciate much of the specific changes in the Affordable Care Act, is hemming and hawing. After the Supreme Court decision this week, Berg was one of the first Republicans to abandon the GOP position and say he now supports making it illegal for insurance companies to deny pre-existing conditions. That's good-- except for one thing: how does he plan to pay for that? He's still opposed to the individual mandate which gives the insurance companies the wherewithal to implement that. The alternative, of course, is the public option, which most Democrats would be happy to see-- but which Berg is against. So, other than desperately wanting to win a Senate seat, what does he really stand for? No one knows, not even Rick Berg or Karl Rove. It's just about raw partisan politics for those two, not about policy or substance... let alone truth or the reality of peoples' lives. The DSCC nailed Berg late last week:

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision yesterday, Rick Berg is trying to hide his long record supporting loopholes for insurance companies to kick North Dakotans off their health care plans. The Washington Post reports that Berg's spokesman told a North Dakota newspaper yesterday that Berg now supports the part of health care reform law that "closes the donut hole, and doesn't deny coverage for pre-existing conditions." But Berg, by his own admission, has voted dozens of times to dismantle and repeal the law that included those provisions, and even as recently as last week told a partisan crowd he wanted "the whole thing... 100%" to be thrown out.

"Rick Berg is using partisan Washington double-speak to hide his support for creating new loopholes for insurance companies to kick North Dakotans off their health plans," said Nathan Click, spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "Rick Berg has voted to allow insurance companies to discriminate against North Dakotans with pre-existing conditions, young people, pregnant women and cancer patients. Rick Berg even voted to force seniors to pay hundreds more for prescription drug coverage and even voted for a partisan budget that would end the Medicare guarantee for North Dakota seniors. Now, Rick Berg is trying to make North Dakotans forget that he wants to allow insurance companies to discriminate against North Dakotans and cover up his long record."

By his own admission, Berg has voted dozens of times to dismantle the law that included protections that stop insurance companies from kicking young people off their parent's health care plan. His votes would have created new loopholes to allow insurance companies to consider pregnancy a pre-existing condition and allowed them to once again kick cancer patients off their plans. Berg's votes would have forced the average North Dakotan senior to pay $554 more on average each year just for prescription drugs.

"Whether he is trying to cover up his votes to end the Medicare guarantee for seniors or the dozens of times he tried to create more loopholes for insurance companies to discriminate against patients, Rick Berg is playing partisan games with North Dakotans health care, and that's simply not right," added Click.

Back in North Dakota Berg tells voters what he thinks they want to hear. In Washington he's on the same page as radical fringe characters like Steve King. But with Karl Rove's dark cash buying up virtually all the airtime on North Dakota TV and radio for October, will it even matter?

Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) Shows Red State Democrats How To Talk About ObamaCare

The GOP and their Big Business allies and media outlets have worked really hard to poison the well against ObamaCare. It isn't working among Democratic voters, of course-- nor was it meant to-- but it is working among Republicans, of course, and some low-info independents. The individual mandate, a terrible conservative idea Democrats were insane to embrace, is hated everywhere-- by conservatives, liberals and everyone in between (except Big Insurance) and it's complicated and abstract and still unexplained to most Americans. It was a bad idea when the conservatives thought it up and it was a bad idea when Romney based his healthcare plan on it and it was a bad idea when Blue Dogs, New Dems and other ConservaDems forced the Democratic caucus to make it the core of the healthcare reform bill in return for their (partial) support. If the Supreme Court strikes the bill down, as seems likely, the human toll, something Republicans are ideologically and funadamentally opposed to looking at, will be immense.

Opponents of the Affordable Care Act, such as Mitt Romney, say it should be replaced with a state-by-state approach. Romney's home state, Massachusetts, is the pioneer-- Romney signed a 2006 law that has extended coverage to nearly all residents.

But many other states have demonstrated little political will to help people obtain health coverage. In some, such as Texas and Virginia, the threshold for Medicaid eligibility is so stringent that parents earning $10,000 a year are too well-off to qualify.

States that have made an effort to offer subsidized coverage, as Tennessee did in the 1990s, have typically found that costs became unsustainable when people in poor health enrolled at higher rates than healthier ones. It is that problem that the individual insurance mandate in the national law, the crux of the Supreme Court case, is meant to address.

Democrats running in red districts or red states are in a tough situation with voters who are uninterested in nuance and long used to voting against their own financial interests. The campaign video (above), released yesterday by Democrat Heidi Heitkamp handles it exceedingly well. It's a response to the latest DC special interests attacks funded by secret donors. They've already spent over half a million dollars-- which goes a LONG way in North Dakota-- smearing Heitkamp and bolstering the campaign of the state's biggest, and most hated, landlord, Rick Berg. If you haven't seen it yet, take a look, or even watch it again. Key line: "There are good things, and bad things in the health care law, but we have to make coverage more secure, not less. Unlike my opponent, I won't vote to deny coverage to kids or let insurance companies deny coverage for pre-existing conditions."

Heitkamp has reminded the media that just months after filming a campaign ad attacking his opponent for eliminating waste within Medicare, Berg voted to maintain these very same savings. According to the Associated Press: “In a post-election reversal, House Republicans are supporting nearly $450 billion in Medicare cuts that they criticized vigorously last fall after Democrats and President Barack Obama passed them as part of their controversial health care law. The cuts are included in the 2012 budget that Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., unveiled last week and account for a significant share of the $5.8 trillion in claimed savings over the next decade.” Rick Berg... a hypocrite? No one who's ever dealt with him as their landlord would have to wonder. He also voted, right after being elected to the House, to allow insurance companies to deny health insurance to people with pre-existing conditions, a part of ObamaCare that is even popular with Republicans.

Even with all the money Big Business has been dumping into the North Dakota race, polls show that Berg is still losing. Heidi's a real fighter and she's not going to be pushed around by Karl Rove and his financiers. As Attorney General, she took on Big Tobacco and won. When she was diagnosed with cancer-- just two months from election day-- she underwent chemotherapy and she still managed to campaign. The DSCC was smart to back her, even in a tough electoral environment. The DCCC, on the other hand, is insane-- or would rather see Republicans win than help progressives (something I'm hearing from everywhere in the country now, both inside and outside Congress-- to not back former American Diabetes Association national spokesperson, Lee Rogers, a celebrated surgeon, in his race against healthcare for Buck McKeon.

As a doctor and as a dedicated progressive, Rogers opposed the individual mandate and has been an eloquent advocate of a Medicare-For-All approach. His insights on healthcare reform aren't ideological; they're from a practicing medical specialist in Los Angeles County. This is what he told me late last night:

I find the silence of the big insurance companies most interesting. You'd think they'd be spending millions on public awareness campaigns promoting Obamacare. They were certainly the all-around winners from the law, with nearly 50 million new customers mandated and no caps on premiums. Must cover pre-existing conditions? Big deal! Without caps on premiums, patients can be priced out of the market. The US healthcare system is not a free market. Patients are not empowered or knowledgeable enough to make decisions based on cost. It's not like getting an oil change. Healthcare is complicated and that's why you need a doctor, but your doctor is not in charge. Doctors don't determine what is "medically necessary"; insurance companies do. They deny coverage for procedures or treatments they determine not to be necessary.

As many have read, I think Obamacare didn't go far enough protecting patients. It was a "compromise" between Republicans and Democrats not like I've seen before. After both sides finished, it was nothing like either wanted. Democrats pushed it through as their signature legislation, but it could have been so much better. Doctors and patients need to be directing healthcare, not greedy insurers who only make money if they charge you higher premiums or give you less services.

That's a voice we need in Congress instead of the corrupt pile of steaming crap who sells his vote to the highest bidder CA-25 has now. If you'd like to help swap out Buck McKeon for Dr. Lee Rogers, this is the place.

The NRSC's Worst Draft Pick For 2012: North Dakota Elitist Rick Berg

North Dakota sometimes seems like a hopelessly red state. Obama only won 45% of the vote against McCain. The last Democratic presidential nominee to win was LBJ. They've had a long line of Republican governors since 1992 and they have a Republican state legislature. Their only congressman is a Republican. Republican John Hoeven was elected to the Senate in 2010 with 76% of the vote. And the other Senate seat is open because Democrat Kent Conrad is retiring. But North Dakota sometimes has a surprise independent streak. Until 2010 Democrats had been elected in every congressional and Senate since 1982.

This year polls show a neck-and-neck race between an extremely well-liked and popular Democrat, former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp and a pretty widely disliked and polarizing Republican, Rick Berg. North Dakota is home to a lot of renters-- and it just so happens that Berg, founder of Goldmark Property Management, made millions preying on tenants. His shady property management company doesn't have a Better Business Bureau Accreditation-- the BBB site and the Internet are teaming with complaints about what a den of crooks Berg's company is-- unfairly withholding security deposits from almost anyone, including college students.

Berg was elected to the state's single House seat in the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse that swept Earl Pomeroy and dozens of other Blue Dogs around the country out of office. But Heidi is no Earl Pomeroy and no Blue Dog. She's an honest-to-goodness Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Democrat. I ran into John Nichols at a Nation event a week or so ago and he told me I should look into her because, he said, she would make a really good senator. Berg, on the other hand, is likely to be as dismal a senator as he is a representative.

Earlier this year, Berg was fundraising online and sending messages in the name of Janne Myrdal, who serves as the President of the Concerned Women of America's North Dakota chapter. What the email doesn't mention is that Myrdal is a member of CWA and CWA has a history of very, very extreme positions-- including their opposition to the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act.

In fact, Berg has cozied up to CWA, which opposes VAWA by issuing crazy right-wing talking points for... people like Berg to parrot. Like this: "Most violence against women is from ‘boyfriend’ (often a succession of them) not husbands or fathers (62 percent is boyfriend violence)."

And Berg is a cosponsor of the Blunt Amendment, which would take away basic preventive care from women for almost any reason.

That's not all, of course. Berg has a history of opposing measures that would protect and help victims of domestic violence. North Dakota is one of just nine states that allow domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. But Berg rejected a bill that would have stopped insurance companies from using domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. "Rick Berg was chairman of the committee that heard the bill then. He says its supporters didn't have any examples of battered women being denied coverage.”

And when VAWA came up in Congress, Berg, needless to say, refused to lead. On March 21, 2012, a North Dakota TV station [see video below] reported that Berg’s office said he won’t take a position on reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act “until all the provisions are in place.” Then, he changed his mind after Heidi began to rally support for the issue. "Berg's position on the issue came to light after Heidi Heitkamp, his Democratic opponent in this fall's North Dakota U.S. Senate race, hosted the first of a series of roundtable discussions on domestic violence in Grand Forks on Wednesday." 

Rick Berg is Only Looking Out for Millionaires LIke Himself.

Rick Berg is listed as the 14th richest member of the U.S. House. So it's no surprise that he was recently caught on camera admitting that he didn't know the minimum wage. But he also has voted time and again to oppose raising the minimum wage -- at the same time he's voted to raise his own pay. He even opposed the concept of a minimum wage, saying, "You would say that government should control that choice rather than the employer?"

But Berg also votes like a millionaire. He opposed the Buffett rule. And he voted for Paul Ryan's budget that would give millionaires like himself another $265,000 in tax cuts.

Sunday Classics: "Wretches like us" -- class warfare and the tragic depths of Berg's "Wozzeck"

WOZZECK: What is to be poor! You see, sir, it's all a matter of money, money.
But if you haven't any, just try bringing children into the world in a moral fashion then.
We are flesh and blood as well.
Certainly, if I were a gentleman and owned a hat and a watch and a monocle and spoke in a genteel way, then I would be virtuous too.
It must be a fine thing to be virtuous, sir. But I'm only a poor fellow.
People like us are always unfortunate in this world and the next.
I believe that if we went to heaven, we should be set to work to help make the thunder.

-- Wozzeck, to the Captain, in Act I, Scene 1
(translation by Sarah E. Soulsby for Decca Records, 1988)

Mack Harrell (bs-b), Wozzeck; New York Philharmonic, Dimitri Mitropoulos, cond. Columbia/CBS/Sony, live recording of a concert performance, 1951

by Ken

"Wretches like us" isn't exactly what Wozzeck says when he finally expounds beyond "Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann" ("Yes indeed, Captain"). It's Richard Stokes's English rendering of the simpler phrase "Wir arme Leut'" -- "We poor people." But it's a rendering that's not only vivider but maybe even truer to the original, or anyway truer to the sense of the original.

I was kind of shocked when my friend Richard mentioned, in whichever season the Met last did Alban Berg's Wozzeck (based on the play be the tragically short-lived Georg Büchner, 1813-1837), that he had traded in his subscription tickets for it. I knew it couldn't be because of that awful "modern" music (can a piece first performed in 1925 still really be thought of as "modern"? perhaps so), because I know he loves Wozzeck. He's an old-fashioned romantic opera-lover, but that romantic operatic passion extends naturally to repertory that some people might find surprising, like the operas of Janáček -- and Wozzeck.

No, the problem was almost that he loves the opera too much, and takes it too seriously. He just wasn't prepared to face the horribleness of it, and he mentioned specifically the opera's final image: of the toddler who has just lost both his parents -- who up to that moment had hardly anything or anyone in the world and now has nothing and no one -- riding his hobby horse chanting, "Hop-hop, hop-hop, hop-hop."

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act III, Scenes 4-5

WOZZECK, having murdered MARIE in a jealous rage by plunging a knife in her throat by a pond in the woods, has staggered his way back to the pond, realizing that he lost his grip on the knife. Overwhelmed with terror and guilt, he stumbles over the corpse, then actually finds the knife and throws it in the water, then decides it will be found and incriminate him. He staggers into the water after it, but is dragged into the water.

Who should happen by the pond then but WOZZECK's old nemeses the CAPTAIN and the DOCTOR? They imagine they hear the voice of a drowning man and naturally hurry off.

The scene shifts to the street in front of MARIE's dwelling, where her little son is riding a hobby horse. Word spreads among the neighborhood children of her murder. Before they rush off to the pond to see for themselves, one of them thoughtfully tells her son: "You! Your mother is dead!" The child is left riding the hobby horse, chanting, "Hop-hop, hop-hop, hop-hop."

Eberhard Wächter (b), Wozzeck; Heinz Zednik (t), the Captain; Alexander Malta (bs), the Doctor; Vienna Philharmonic, Christoph von Dohnányi, cond. Decca, recorded December 1979


FOR MORE JOLLY BITS FROM WOZZECK, CLICK HERE

OUR WOZZECK PREVIEWS

(1) Friday night: Meet Marie (the Act I solo scene, including the lullaby)
(2) Saturday night: Meet Wozzeck -- "Wretches like us" (the scene with the Captain)

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Sunday Classics preview: "Wretches like us" -- Berg's "Wozzeck": (2) Introducing Wozzeck

Act I, Scene 2: Franz Hawlata as Wozzeck and Joel Sorensen as his friend Andres in San Diego, 2007

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act I, Opening Scene: "Wretches like us!"

Wretches like us! You see, Herr Hauptmann, wealth, wealth! Without money! Let one of us try to bring his own kind into the world in a fine moral way! We have flesh and blood too!

[in English] Andrew Shore (b), Wozzeck; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Daniel, cond. Chandos, recorded July 1-18, 2002

by Ken

Last night we met our "heroine," Marie, flirting with the ruggedly handsome Drum Major, then returning her attention to her poor bastard baby boy. Now we go back to the opening scene, where the boy's father, the soldier Franz Wozzeck, is under siege from the Captain he's trying to shave.

We're going to hear the whole scene in the click-through -- from this same English-language recording, from the DG Wozzeck from which we heard Marie's Act I solo scene last night, and finally in Italian (!) with the celebrated character tenor Hugues Cuénod as the Captain and Tito Gobbi as Wozzeck.


FOR THE FULL CAPTAIN-WOZZECK SCENE, CLICK HERE

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Sunday Classics preview: Berg's "Wozzeck" -- (1) Introducing Marie

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act I, Scene 3 (excerpt)

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!

Josephine Barstow (s), Marie; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Daniel, cond. Chandos, recorded July 1-18, 2002

by Ken

We're going to meet poor woebegone Wozzeck in tomorrow's preview. I thought we would start tonight with Marie, the mother of his child. This is her first scene in the opera, and we'll hear a fuller version in the click-through. For now I wanted you to hear just this bit of lullaby, sung by a wonderful artist, Dame Josephine Barstow.

It's just a shame she didn't get to record Marie until 2002, when she was pushing 62. Earlier on, considering that she was not only a lovely singer but a strikingly lovely woman and a terrific actress, she must have been a stunning Marie.

(I remember being close to bowled over by her when she came to the Met as, of all things, Musettta in Puccini's La Bohème -- so striking, vocally and dramatically, in a performance that otherwise didn't have a whole lot of drama going, that it was hard to say exactly that she was wasted in the role. It was the first time it occurred to me that the role has some real dramatic possibilities.)


FOR PROPER VERSIONS OF THIS HAUNTING
SCENE IN ENGLISH AND GERMAN, CLICK HERE

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[6/19/2011] Sunday Classics: "Wretches like us" -- class warfare and the tragic depths of Berg's "Wozzeck" (continued)

As if this poor little fellow's prospects weren't bleak enough when he still had a father and mother (Alan Held as Wozzeck and Waltraud Meier as Marie at the Met, 2011) . . .


It's funny to be thinking about this poor doomed child so soon after writing about how Congressman and Mrs. Paul Ryan have socked away $150K for their three little ones' college education (a good part of their wealth coming, it seems from her family's mining interests) -- excellent parenting unless you consider it in the light of the congressman's uncomprehending Ayn Randian economic "philosophy," based on his assumption that everything he has, he earned for himself, whereas in reality most everything he has, without his realizing it, was handed to him on an at least pewter platter.

We've already met this poor child's mother, Marie, in Friday night's preview, and his father, Wozzeck, in last night's preview. What's remarkable in Berg's setting of the material is the depth of his empathy, his understanding from the inside of what it feels like to see the world through their eyes, as a place of almost no opportunity, and with even less opportunity for their helpless little boy. (In the Act II Bible-reading we're going to hear shortly, Marie will either coincidentally or comprehendingly read about a child left with no one to care for him.)


FIRST LET'S HEAR WOZZECK WITH HIS OTHER
NEMESIS, THE DOCTOR

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act I, Scene 4,
Wozzeck and the Doctor

English singing translation by Richard Stokes

Scene 4. The Doctor's study. Sunny afternoon.

[Passacaglia: Theme]

DOCTOR [rushes to meet WOZZECK as he comes in the door]: This is monstrous, Wozzeck! You gave your word.
Dear, dear, dear!
WOZZECK: What is it, Herr Doktor?
DOCTOR: I saw it all, Wozzeck, again I saw you pissing.
Pissing there on the pavement, just like a dog!
Is it for th is that I pay you three groschen?
Wozzeck!
This is bad! The world is bad, so bad!
[Groaning] Oh!
WOZZECK: Surely, Herr Doktor, when forced to it by
Nature . . .

[Variation I]

DOCTOR [flaring up]: By nature! By nature! Superstition -- deplorable superstition! Have I not demonstrated that the bladder is subject to the human will? [Flares up again] Call of nature, Wozzeck?! Humans are free! In man, individuality is sublimated into freedom!
[Shaking his head to himself] Urinating!

[Variation II]

[To WOZZECK again] Now then, I hope you've eaten your beans up, Wozzeck? [WOZZECK nods.] Only beans, now, nothing else but beans, don't forget! And during next week, we'll introduce a . . .

[Variation III]

. . . little mutton. There'll soon be a new revolution in medicine: [counting off on his fingers] protein, lipids, carbohydrates. [Broad gesture] And next: Oxyaldehydanhydride . . . [gesture]
[With sudden anger] And yet, you insisted on pissing . . .
[Goes up to WOZZECK, then checks himself]

[Variation IV]

No! . . . I must not get so angry, anger is ad for you and unscientific! I am quite calm, my pulse is beating its regular sixty Good God! Why lose sleep over a mere human being? If a salamander died, that would be far more serious.
{Again agitated.] This is monstrous. Wozzeck, you really shouldn't have urinated!

[Variation V]

WOZZECK {tries to pacify the DOCTOR, who is making furious gestures]: You see, Herr Doktor, sometimes people have a structure, it's how we're made, and yet, and yet with Nature it's different. [Snaps his fingers] You see, with Nature it's . . . it is like . . . how shall I describe it . . . I mean . . .
DOCTOR: Wozzeck, you're philosophizing!

[Variation VI]

WOZZECK: When Nature has . . .
DOCTOR [imitating WOZZECK]: What? When nature has . . . ?
WOZZECK]: When Nature has died, and the world has darkened so, so you have to fumble around for it with your hands, and you feel that it crumbles like spiders' webs . . . Ah! When it's there but is not . . .

[Variation VII]

. . . there!
Ah! Ah!

[Variation VIII]

Marie! When everything is dark, [takes a few steps across the room with outstretched arms] and the western sky just glows like fire, flaming from a furnace . . . Oh what, what is there to . . .
DOCTOR: Christ, you're lurlching, as though your body was standing on . . .

[Variation IX]

WOZZECK: . . . cling to?
DOCTOR: . . . spider legs.
WOZZECK [stays near the DOCTOR; confidentially]: Herr Doktor, when at midday the sun is high, and it seems the world is bursting into flames . . .

[Variation X]

. . . then I hear them, terrifying voices start talking to me.
DOCTOR: Wozzeck, you have got an . . .

[Variation XI]

. . . aberatio!
WOZZECK [interrupting]: The toadstools! Have you observed the circles of the toadstools out there on the ground?

[Variation XII]

Figurations and circles . . . oh, to understand them!

[Variation XIII]

[track 2]
DOCTOR: Wozzeck -- just like a lunatic! you're presenting with an idée fixe, a most wonderful . . .

[Variation XIV]

. . . aberatio mentalis partialis, second species.
Nicely cultivated!

[Variation XV]

Wozzeck, you shall get another rise!

[Variation XVI]

You're doing all your duties? Shaving your Captain? Catching my lizards?

[Variation VII]

Eating our beans up?
WOZZECK: I do everything, Herr Doktor; the money I earn is for Marie. It's for . . .

[Variation XVIII]

. . . her I work!
DOCTOR: You are a fascinating case. Just behave yourself, Wozzeck, and there'll be yet another groschen [penny] payment. But what d'you have to do?
WOZZECK [paying no attention to the DOCTOR]: Ah, Marie!
DOCTOR: What must you do?
WOZZECK: Marie!
DOCTOR: What?
WOZZECK: Ah!

[Variation XIX]

DOCTOR: Eat those beans up, then move on to mutton; no pissing, keep on shaving your Captain, and cultivate your idée fixe, my boy!

[Variation XX]

Oh! [Increasingly ecstatic] My hypothesis! Oh my fame! I shall be immortal! Immortal! Immortal!

[Variation XXI]

[At the height of ecstasy] Immortal! [Suddenly quite calm, walking up to WOZZECK] Wozzeck, let me look at your tongue now. [WOZZECK obeys.]

CURTAIN [at first very fast, then suddenly
slow, and closing very gradually]

[in English] Clive Bayley (bs), the Doctor; Andrew Shore (b), Wozzeck; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Daniel, cond. Chandos, recorded July 1-18, 2002
[in German] Karl Christian Kohn (bs), the Doctor; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Wozzeck; Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded March-Apr. 1965


NOW WE'RE GOING TO HEAR THE THREE-MOVEMENT
SUITE FROM THE OPERA ARRANGED BY BERG HIMSELF

And with it we're going to have the excellent commentary provided for RCA's booklet notes by the late Neville Cardus (1889-1975), onetime music critic of The Guardian. To make matters more confusing, we are going to hear the extraordinary recording of the suite Cardus's notes were written to accompany -- but only at the end, all together. It's a different performance we'll be hearing movement by movement.

NEVILLE CARDUS: The recorded excerpts being toward the end of the second scene of Act I. Wozzeck and another soldier are in a field in the late afternoon. Already Wozzeck has premonitions of the tragedy to come. "The place is accursed," he says. "Still, all is still, and the world is dead." Our first excerpt begins orchestrally and in twenty bars takes us to Marie's room. We hear a military band passing beneath the window. Marie, with her child, is watching. She burst into song at sight of the Drum Major:

Soldiers, soldiers
are handsome fellows!

She closes the window and begins to rock the child to sleep. Her music is a German nursery cradlesong done into semi-atonalism:

Come, my boy,
what do people expect?
You are only a harlot's child,
yet you give your mother joy
with your unhallowed face.

Girl, what now can be done?
You have got a child and no husband.
What's the good of asking?
If I should sing the livelong night:
"Hush, my baby sweet,"
not a soul would come to my aid.
Hansel, harness your six white chargers,
give them your fodder, give them to drink.
No fodder they'll eat,
no water they'll drink!
Only cool wine must it be!

Hanne-Lore Kuhse (s), Marie; Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Kegel, cond. Deutsche Schallplatten/Vanguard, recorded c1966

NEVILLE CARDUS: The recording moves from this scene to the opening of Act III. Marie is again in her room, alone with her child. By candlelight she reads from the Bible the story of the woman taken in adultery:

"And there is no guile found in His mouth . . ."
Lord, Lord, look not upon me!

Variation [Marie continues reading]
But the Pharisees brought unto Him
a woman that lived in adultery.
Jesus said:

Variation II:
""I condemn thee not; go now
and sin no more!"

Variation III [Looking at her child]
Lord God, the boy stabs me to the heart!
Go! You're nothing to brag about!

Variation IV [Marie cries suddenly]
No, no! Come here!
Come to me!

Variation V [She begins to tell the child a story]:
"Once there was a poor child that had neither father no mother --
Both were dead, and there was no one else in the world --
And it was hungry and wept day and night.

Variation VI [Continuing the narration]:
"And since he had no one left in the world . . ."
Franz has not come, not yesterday, not today . . .

Variation VII [Turning quickly to the Bible]:
What is written here about the Magdalen?

Fugue [Solo viola take s over the subject at the second bar, a solo violin at the third, and a solo double bass at the fourth. Marie reads, then beats her breast]:
"And she knelt and kissed His feet and wept, mostening them with her tears, and anointed them with ointment . . . "
Holy one, I would anoint Thy feet also. Lord, Thou hadst pity on her; have pity on me too!

Hanne-Lore Kuhse (s), Marie; Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Kegel, cond. Deutsche Schallplatten/Vanguard, recorded c1966

NEVILLE CARDUS: Now we go to the opera's shattering climax. Wozzeck has murdered Marie, and himself has drowned, searching for the knife. The music marvelously evokes the haunted night,, the sinister forest and pool, and the blood-red moon. In the orchestra there are ghostly croakings and gurglings. Somehow these instrumental tones make silence audible. The Captain and Doctor pass by. They hear Wozzeck's death gasp. Then they hurry away in dread. Berg moves to the opera's end by means of an orchestral interlude. It is an adagio and a lamentation, sadly reviewing the main motifs associated with Wozzeck. This interlude is essentially Mahlerian in tone-flavors and the melodic shapings. It reveals Berg as a born romantic, and a man of as much heart as brain. A flash of celesta tone reveals the last scene and the bright sunshine. Wozzeck's little boy is rocking on the hobbyhorse. The other children sing Ring-a-roses. Now comes the messenger of doom, in the guise of another innocent child, who points to Marie's boy, telling the dread news. Marie's baby rides on, as the rest of the children run away; he is left alone on the stage, singing "Hop, hop!" -- left alone in the world, no father, no mother, alone in the mercilessly ironic world of Büchner and Berg. But Berg's music, at the end, somehow purges terror with pity.

Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra, Herbert Kegel, cond. Deutsche Schallplatten/Vanguard, recorded c1966

NOW LET'S HEAR THE COMPLETE RCA RECORDING
OF BERG'S THREE MOVEMENTS FROM WOZZECK

Phyllis Curtin (s), Marie; Sacred Heart Boychoir of Roslndale, Massachusetts, Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf, cond. RCA, recorded c1963


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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[6/18/2011] Preview: "Wretches like us" -- Berg's "Wozzeck" (2): Introducing Wozzeck (continued)

Hildegard Behrens as Marie and Alan Held as Wozzeck in San Francisco, 1999


HERE'S THE FULL OPENING SCENE OF WOZZECK --
IN ENGLISH, GERMAN, AND ITALIAN

BERG: Wozzeck, Op. 7: Act I, Scene 1

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

Scene 1. The CAPTAIN's room. Early morning. The CAPTAIN is sitting on a chair in front of a mirror. WOZZECK is shaving the CAPTAIN.

CAPTAIN: Slowly, Wozzeck, slowly!
One thing at a time!
[Anxiously] You make me quite giddy . . . [covers himself with his hand; steadies himself; WOZZECK stops what he is doing] What can I do with the extra ten minutes leisure time if you finish early today?
[WOZZECK continues shaving with interruptions.]
Wozzeck, consider: you still have thirty years ahead of you, remember! Thirty years! That's three hundred sixty months, you know. And then all those days and hours and minutes. What can you possibly want with such a vast expanse of time? [Serious again] Sort yourself out, Wozzeck!
WOZZECK: Of course, Herr Hauptmann!
CAPTAIN [mystically]: It makes me afraid for the world, to think of eternity. Eternity -- that's eternal, you understand. Now, all of a sudden, it's not eternal, merely one moment, yes, one moment! Wozzeck, it frightens me when I consider that he world revolves in just one day! Whenever I see millwheels go round, I am laid low with melancholia!
WOZZECK: Of course, Herr Hauptmann!
CAPTAIN: Wozzeck, you always appear so harassed! A decent man doesn't fret; a decent man, with a conscience beyond reproach, always moves slowly . . .
[Almost spoken] Say something then, Wozzeck.

[Gigue]

And what about the weather?
WOZZECK: It's bad, Herr Hauptmann! Wind!
CAPTAIN: I sense it; there's something so blust'ry out there. Such a wind sets my teeth on edge, ,just like a mouse. [Artfully] I think the wind is blowing from south-north?
WOZZECK: Of course, Herr Hauptmann!
CAPTAIN [laughs loudly] Ha ha! Ha ha ha! South-north!
[Even more loudly] Ha ha! Ha ha ha! Ha ha! Ha ha! Oh, you are dumb, quite absurdly dumb.
[track 2]
[Sympathetically] Wozzeck, you are a decent man, and yet . . . you have no moral sense!

[Quasi Gavotte]

You don't conduct yourself morally! (You follow? A most delightful word.)
[With pathos] You have a child who is not blessed by our God's church.
WOZZECK: Of course . . . [Stops]
CAPTAIN: As our regimental chaplain always preaches to the men: "Not bless'd by God's holy church" (the words are not my own).

[Double I]

WOZZECK: Herr Hauptmann, the Lord above will not spurn the poor little creature, just because the "Amen" was not spoken before the mite was made. The Lord said, "Suffer the children to come to me!"

[Double II]

CAPTAIN {jumping up in a rage]: What do you mean? And what sort of curious answer is that? You make me quite confused! [His voice cracks.] When I say 'You," then I mean "You," "You" . . .

[Air]

Wretches like us! You see, Herr Hauptmann, wealth, wealth! Without money! Let one of us try to bring his own kind into the world in a fine moral way! We have flesh and blood too!
Oh, if I were well bred, and had a top hat, a pocket watch and a monocle and a proper accent . . . then I would be virtuous too! It must be wonderful to be virtuous, Herr Hauptmann. But I'm only a poor man! Men like us always will be ill-fated in this world and in any other world! I think, if we ever got to Heaven, we'd all have to manufacture thunder!

[Prelude in retrograde: Introduction]

CAPTAIN [somewhat nonplussed]: All right, all right! [Pacifying] I know. You are a decent man, [exaggerating] a decent man, [more controlled] only you think too much. That's bad. You always appear so harassed.
[Anxiously] Our discussion has quite fatigued me. Run along, but don't rush ahead! Down the avenue and back to the barracks. [WOZZECK is about to depart in his usual haste.] And keep in the middle, remember, nice and slowly, yes slowly!
[WOZZECK exits]

CURTAIN

[in English] Stuart Kale (t), the Captain; Andrew Shore (b), Wozzeck; Philharmonia Orchestra, Paul Daniel, cond. Chandos, recorded July 1-18, 2002

[in German] Gerhard Stolze (t), the Captain; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (b), Wozzeck; Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, Karl Böhm, cond. DG, recorded March-Apr. 1965

[in Italian] Hugues Cuénod (t), the Captain; Tito Gobbi (b), Wozzeck; RAI Rome Symphony Orchestra, Nino Sanzogno, cond. Live performance, Sept. 30, 1954


IN TOMORROW'S SUNDAY CLASSICS POST

You'd think after meeting Marie last night and Wozzeck tonight, the plan was to bring them together tomorrow. Alas, no. But we are going to hear more of each of them, and hear how the whole sorry drama ends.


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[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.


RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE POST

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