European American Music Distributors Company is a member of the Schott Music Group

Alban Berg's Lulu in New Production by William Kentridge at The Metropolitan Opera

Nov. 03, 2015

Alban Berg's <em>Lulu</em> in New Production by William Kentridge at The Metropolitan Opera

The Metropolitan Opera presents William Kentridge’s highly anticipated new production of Alban Berg’s Lulu, starring soprano Marlis Petersen in her final appearance in the title role. Lothar Koenigs leads the orchestra, with Susan Graham as Geschwitz, Daniel Brenna as Alwa, and Johan Reuter as Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper. Acclaimed for his dazzling staging of Shostakovich’s The Nose, Kentridge’s Lulu draws on “the work done in Germany in the 1920s and ‘30s, the remnants of Expressionism.” Kentridge elaborates:

Ink is the primary medium of the production… Essentially it’s the vehemence of a black brushstroke, the idea of trying to find some equivalent, visually, to the violence of the opera. It’s almost as if ink becomes the black blood that is spilled throughout the production—the sense of a brush mark across a sheet of paper having the effect of a knife across flesh. We also looked at Joseph Pabst’s 1929 silent film Pandora’s Box with Louise Brooks. And the woodcuts of Max Beckmann, Max Pechstein, and Otto Dix inspired our thinking about the production as well. Some of the images are based on photographs of the time. Alwa, the musician and lover of Lulu, is very much a self-portrait of Alban Berg, and we used a portrait of Berg to stand in for him.

The opera is based on German playwright Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box). Wedekind’s work often pairs bourgeois society and sexual hypocrisy, a subject matter that was polarizing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; in fact, both plays were banned throughout Wedekind’s lifetime. The operatic work is about the struggle of Lulu fulfilling the role of femme fatale and the ideals that men project on her.

The production opens November 5 at The Metropolitan Opera in New York and runs through December 3.

Visit metopera.org for details on the production.

For more information on Alban Berg, visit universaledition.com.

Alban Berg
Lulu (1927-1935)
opera in two acts
libretto (Ger) by Alban Berg
for high soprano, 2 mezzo-sopranos, tenor, lyric tenor, tenor-buffo, high baritone,  2 baritones, 2 high basses, bass, bass-buffo and additional roles
3.3.4.3-4.3.3.1-timp.6perc-hp.pno.asax-str
stage music: 2cl, asax, tsax, 4 jazz tpt, 2 jazztbn, sousaphon, jazz drum set, pno, bjo, 3vn, db
120'

News