After

100

Years,

an

Operatic

Masterpiece

Keeps

Shocking

Us

When Alban Berg’s opera “Wozzeck” was first seen in Berlin 100 years ago, it jolted its audience with a musical twist.

Opera fans were used to modern works that abandoned traditional ideas of form and sound. And for the most part they got that with “Wozzeck,” an unsparing and tragic thriller about a soldier driven to murder by indignity and madness, written in a style that would make Berg one of the great avant-garde composers of his time.

But at the climax of “Wozzeck,” Berg took a bayonet to his opera’s worldview and let the orchestra wail in grief.

This is a moment of pure feeling, and it comes out of nowhere. Up to this point, the orchestra, standing in for Berg, plays the role of passive, even cold observer. But then he steps out from behind the curtain to deliver a eulogy through music, which inspired apocalyptic animations by the artist William Kentridge in his production for the Metropolitan Opera