Also this issue: Bad for the Business A trio of showbiz books walks on the mean side. -A.D. Amorosi artquicks More stuff going on this week... ComedySportz Cares -Juliet Fletcher "Martians and Motorcycles" -Andrew Parks "Privacy Writes: Public Lives, Personal Letters" -Juliet Fletcher Fourth Of U LIE Rebel Party -Ainé Ardron-Doley PII Gallery | Stedman Gallery | And Then Thereâs · -Lori Hill Neal Barnard -Vance Lehmkuhl

July 3- 9, 2003

artpicks

Wozzeck

When he died at 24 in 1837, Georg Büchner left a fragmentary drama of an ordinary soldier driven murderously mad as he tries in vain to hold on to life with his mistress and their child. Woyzeck remains one of the founding texts of modernism, with as fascinatingly dark (and as fundamentally humanist) an aesthetic as any Aki Kaurismäki film. Seeing the play in 1914, Alban Berg vowed to make it into an opera. Three years of Austrian army service deepened his vision and resolve; he published it in 1923. Right-wing protests made the 1925 world premiere a scandal (plus ça change), and the extraordinarily powerful work got its U.S. premiere right here on Broad Street in 1931, with the Academy pulsating as Stokowski whipped up the Philadelphia Orchestra to Berg's shattering climaxes. Opera Festival of New Jersey introduces a reduced orchestration version with Dutch director Wim Trompert's acclaimed production. Conducted by OFNJ's accomplished artistic director David Agler, it stars Met singers Daniel Sutin and Marjorie Elinor Dix as the hapless Wozzeck and Marie.

Wozzeck, Tue., July 8, 7:30 p.m., Sun., July 13, 2 p.m. and Sat., July 19, 8 p.m., $25-$90, Opera Festival of New Jersey, McCarter Theatre, Princeton, N.J., 1-866-OFNJ-TKT.

—David Shengold