Wozzeck is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama Woyzeck, which was left incomplete by the German playwright Georg Büchner at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's play on 5 May 1914, and knew at once that he wanted to base an opera on it. From the fragments of unordered scenes left by Büchner, Berg selected fifteen to form a compact structure of three acts with five scenes each. He adapted the libretto himself, retaining "the essential character of the play, with its many short scenes, its abrupt and sometimes brutal language, and its stark, if haunted, realism..."

Wozzeck was conceived during World War I; its composition was completed immediately after that war; and it received its first stage performance, in Berlin, in 1925. It deeply stirred all of Middle Europe of that period. And that period was the period of Dr. Sigmund Freud, the period of Franz Kafka, the period of the rise of National Socialism. In music it was the period that saw the most violent breakdown of old ideas of melody—and, even more, of harmony. It was revolutionary, it was intellectually curious, it was unstable, and it reflected the sickness of the German soul.
 

Berg wrote his own libretto for Wozzeck, basing it on a hundred-year-old play written by a strange, youthful genius named Georg Buchner. It deals with the psychological torture and breakdown of a dull-witted militiaman named Johann Franz Wozzeck and with the tragic fate of his mistress and their illegitimate child. Charming theme, isn't it? And, possibly excepting these three unfortunates, there is scarcely one amiable person in the whole cast. Nevertheless, its entry into the Metropolitan Opera repertory in 1959 was a surprise popular success.