US Edition 
Wozzeck, ENO, London Coliseum, review
Rupert Christiansen enjoys a modern realisation of Berg’s bleak masterpiece, Wozzeck.
A tragedy without hope or salvation: neither Berg’s opera Wozzeck nor Büchner’s original play offer anything to purge or console an audience.
A poor man is driven mad and murders his common-law wife, who has cheated on him; he then kills himself. Their young son is left playing alone, innocent of what has occurred but surely doomed to trudge the same path of exploitation and deprivation as his parents – if he survives. The world is pitiless, and if there is a God, he does not hear us: it could hardly be more bleak.
Carrie Cracknell’s powerful new production of Berg’s desolate masterpiece translates the opera from early 19th-century Germany into modern Britain, imaginatively realised in Tom Scutt’s three-storeyed, cross-sectioned set, with domestic quarters above a mess room on the ground floor.
We could be in a barracks town such as Aldershot or Catterick, where soldiers have just returned from a spell in the Middle East. Wozzeck is a squaddie, traumatised by what he has seen and haunted by ghostly victims of what he has done. He is a gentle man, but a broken and disappointed one – and that is what drives him over the edge.
Cracknell’s concept is realised with terrific theatrical flair and filled with rich naturalistic detail: Wozzeck’s friend Andres furiously playing computer games in his wheelchair, the drugs racket operated by the shady medic, the boozy karaoke night.
Yet although I can buy some of Cracknell’s liberties with Büchner’s text (the murder taking place in Marie’s kitchen, for example), there are significant dimensions which she can’t accommodate.
Christianity defines Wozzeck and Marie’s moral boundaries, but his unanswered search for a deity and her bible-reading scarcely ring true in terms of today’s values (where are the anti-depressants, The X Factor, Primark and benefit scams?) Nor can one believe in Wozzeck’s craven respect for a system of authority so patently corrupt and bullying.
What happens on stage also seems to require something more hard-edged and forensic than the gorgeous tapestry woven by the conductor Edward Gardner and his impassioned orchestra. Their approach is romantic rather than modernist - lushly Mahlerian and mined for an emotional warmth and palette of colours oddly ill-tuned to what we see.
But Leigh Melrose has done nothing better than this Wozzeck, never overplaying his doltishness and singing throughout with clarity and musicality. The American soprano Sara Jakubiak is equally impressive as Marie, though I do wonder why it was necessary to import two of her compatriots for the small roles of Doctor and Drum Major.
Further down the cast, one noted Clare Presland’s sparky Margret and Harry Polden, playing Wozzeck and Marie’s son with a dignity that was both moving and disturbing - as is the entire performance.
Until May 25. Tickets: 020 7 845 9300; eno.org