ABOUT THE PRODUCTION
Now that I have an overview, I am even more convinced of the profound morality of the piece, Lulu’s rise and fall balance each other; in the middle, there is the great turn-around, until – like Don Juan – the Devil gets her. I say – like Don Juan – on purpose, not in order to compare myself – how could I!!! – with Mozart, but only to point out that the two figures, Lulu and Don Juan, are equal.” (Alban Berg, 1934)
Wedekind’s Lulu tragedies deal with the absolute power of Eros in mythical forcefulness. In 1928, Berg decided that they would be the basis of his second opera, which he had completed in short score in 1934; by the time of his death, however, he had only been able to orchestrate the first two acts fully.
Lulu is surrounded by the seductive aura of the natural, the untamed. A “nightwalker of love” (Karl Kraus) without memories who moves outside of conventional morals, she seems to exist for her male surroundings only as a projection, as an image, and yet evades any attempt at control: Lulu unnerves men, scoffs at their claims of possession, disrupts their bourgeois order. And thus, they take revenge: Lulu’s social ascent is followed by her humiliation as part of the “retaliation of a male world that dares to avenge its own guilt” (Kraus).