Music

Woyzeck In Winter (Landmark Productions / Galway International Arts Festival) ★★★★

Rating: 4.0
Author: Michael Halliwell

by Michael Halliwell •

ABR Arts • 19 September 2017

Music

Woyzeck In Winter (Landmark Productions / Galway International Arts Festival) ★★★★

by Michael Halliwell •

ABR Arts • 19 September 2017

The jukebox musical is a fairly recent phenomenon on theatre stages, but has proven to be a popular, and lucrative, method of stringing together a group of popular songs loosely held together by a sometimes attenuated narrative. Mamma Mia! – the collection of ABBA hits that has been running in London since 1999 – is one of the most successful in this genre, but there are many others which exploit this formula.

Adapting a celebrated dramatic work into a different format or genre is nothing new, but melding two of the most significant artistic products of the nineteenth century, both written within ten years of each other, into a single work seems a particularly daunting challenge. Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (1837) is regarded as a landmark in European theatre. Considered by some to be the first modern drama, it has exerted a profound influence. Left unfinished by the untimely death of its author, it received its first performance in Munich in 1913. The fragmentary nature of the play has given directors much creative licence in their staging, including experimenting with the order and omission of scenes.

Michael Halliwell

Michael Halliwell studied literature and music at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, at the London Opera Centre, and with Tito Gobbi in Florence. He has sung in Europe, North America, South Africa and Australia and was principal baritone for many years with the Netherlands Opera, the Nürnberg Municipal Opera, and the Hamburg State Opera singing over fifty major operatic roles, including several world premiere productions. He has served as Chair of Vocal Studies and Opera, Pro-Dean and Head of School, and Associate Dean (Research) at the Sydney Conservatorium. He is President of the International Association for Word and Music Studies. His publications include the monographs, Opera and the Novel (Rodopi: 2005); and National Identity on Contemporary Australian Opera: myths reconsidered (Routledge, 2018), as well as many chapters and articles. He still performs regularly and recent CDs include When the Empire Calls (ABC Classics, 2005); O for a Muse of Fire: Australian Shakespeare Settings (Vox Australis, 2013); Amy Woodforde-Finden: The Oriental Song-Cycles (Toccata Classics, 2014); That Bloody Game; Australian WWI Songs (Wirripang, 2015).