- Adaptation Displacement: The opera is more often performed than the play in non-German-speaking countries.
- Alternative Character Interpretation: Considering that the play was unfinished and opens for much interpretation, oh so much. If we list them, we would be here all night. There is much more than the list here:
- Andres is the last remaining piece of sanity in Woyzeck's head.
- Marie was raped.
- Is Woyzeck sympathetic or to be rightfully blamed?
- The voices are real.
- Harsher in Hindsight: Klaus Kinski's performance in the Werner Herzog film gets really uncomfortable when the viewer is aware of Kinski himself being a mentally disturbed, Ax-Crazy individual in real-life, who got extremely aggressive in many of his interactions with others. In fact, in his native Germany Kinski is almost solely known for his extreme outbursts, both on- and off-stage.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: The doctor makes a crazy experiment with Woyzeck, feeding him nothing but peas. And in 1867, a German invented Erbswurst
, a kind of instant soup made of peas and bacon. The Prussian ministry of war fed some of their soldiers nothing but Erbswurst soup and bread for six weeks. Didn't stop them winning the Franco-Prussian War, though. - Nightmare Fuel:
- The murder scene at the end, naturally, is a prime example of this. Depending on how it's framed, it manages to be outright heartwrenching
- The opera by Alban Berg manages to somehow be even more unnerving than the original play, simply due to the sound of the music. Berg used a typical atonal style, as was typical for compositions of the time, in order to musically portray the hopelessness and unfairness of Woyzeck's life. The fact there's little leviance, if at all, in the music, not to mention the already creepy contents of the play, makes this one of the darkest operas composed in the past few centuries.
- Tear Jerker: From the Waits/Wilson rock opera: "All the World is Green", "The Part You Throw Away"
- Vindicated by History: Büchner's play was not only unfinished, but also far ahead of its time in many ways. Proponents of both Naturalistic and Avant-Garde theatre consider it a forerunner of their own styles. In the 20th century it became a classic of stage and screen.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/Woyzeck
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