From around the world: London. (International).(Opera Review)

On October 15, Royal Opera's new music director, Antonio Pappano, took the podium for Wozzeck. Keith Warner, a regular collaborator with Pappano in Brussels, staged Berg's Expressionist drama, with designs by Stefanos Lazaridis (sets) and Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes). The basic stage picture was a room, covered from floor to ceiling in shiny white tiles. At the back, a second space was visible, where the sleeping soldiers of the barracks scene and the dancers in a low tavern could be glimpsed, as if through a distorting lens. Marie's room formed a small space to one side of the proscenium. Glass water-tanks figured prominently in the scene; Wozzeck stabbed Marie behind one of them. Her blood spilled into it and sank to the bottom. Later, Wozzeck drowned himself in the same tank, which remained onstage for the final scene, when the children's taunting voices (alerting Marie's child to his mother's death) emerged through speakers in different parts of the theater.

Matthias Goerne brought to the title role a lieder-singer's refinement of tonal color and devotion to the text, and the humanity of his creation was all the more palpable for the lack of histrionics that attended his performance. As Marie, Swedish soprano Katarina Dalayman offered ...