Would You Really Want a Tame "Lulu"?
A respectably-costumed bourgeoise Sunday matinee 'Lulu'? Then this production by the Zurich Opera House is NOT for you! This is a lurid, tawdry, narratively fragmented, erotically supercharged 'Lulu', exactly what it should be, in short: defiantly "entartete Kunst"! After all, Max Beckmann and Georg Grosz didn't paint water-lilies, and "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" didn't rely on realistic sets. Alban Berg's unfinished opera "Lulu" is one of the icons of German Expressionism in music, alongside Berg's own earlier opera "Wozzeck", and despite the brutal depravity both works portray, both have become 'standards' in the repertoires of opera companies around the world. This popularity really isn't because proper middle/upper class opera audience relish seeing their psychological closets flung open, though that might contribute. It's the music, the astounding idiomatic musical energy of Berg's vocal lines and especially his orchestral interludes. Berg's version of "twelve-tone' serial...
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