Berg: Wozzeck (in English).(Sound Recording Review)

* Barstow, Rigby; Kale, Woodrow, Bronder, Shore, Bayley; Susan Singh Choristers, Geoffrey Mitchell Choir, Daniel. English text only Chandos 3094

It's now hard to remember how the debate over opera in English translation once reached a fever pitch. Unfortunately, there was never much allowance for the many variables in the equation; how, for example, Teresa Stratas singing the English of Joseph Machlis in the Met's Dialogues of the Carmelites could strike to the heart in a way that Teresa Stratas singing Tony Harrison's English in the Met's Bartered Bride could not. Supposedly, the whole issue was resolved by the widespread adoption of titling systems, but the restless audiences at last season's French-language Met Carmelites were a strong reason to reconsider--and this overwhelming Wozzeck is another.

Chandos's Wozzeck translation by Richard Stokes makes the words more intelligible than they are in some German-language recordings. He gets the humor (Andres in his song: "I've loved to hunt for many years/But I never learnt to shoot!") and gives the singers something to play. Marie ends Act I with "Why should I care? Who could give a damn?"; Wozzeck's last scene is as sickening as can be. Stokes lets us down only once, at the opera's most famous line, "Wir arme Leut," rendered here as "Wretches like us," which doesn't sing well. But otherwise it's all splendidly apt, particularly since the original text makes no pretense to poetic, sensual German in the way that, say, Die Walkure does.

But the real story here is the conducting of Paul Daniel, who leads a ...