Opera Reviews
29 March 2024
Untitled Document

How much of Alban Berg is in his Lulu?



by Steve Cohen
Berg: Lulu
Metropolitan Opera
November 2015

Alban Berg’s only two operas, Wozzeck and Lulu are filled with depravity, bloodshed and unromantic sex. Audiences and critics have denounced them as sordid and pornographic. The composer chose his subjects and wrote his own librettos as well as the music, so you might assume that Berg was disturbed, or at the very least, a man with dark obsessions.

The conductor Sylvan Levin worked with Berg preparing the singers and orchestra for the first American production of Wozzeck (in Philadelphia in 1931). Not only did he work on Berg’s opera, he also socialized with Berg and his wife and he told me that the composer, who spoke perfect English, was aristocratic, sophisticated and charming. Even when he had an extra-marital affair, and his wife knew about it, they maintained tranquility. There were no scandals or violence. He did not associate with criminals nor prostitutes as the characters in Lulu do.

That assessment is confirmed by Karen Monson and by Willi Reich in their definitive biographies of Berg.

The personality of Berg is relevant because this new production of Lulu displays images of him as a prominent part of the show. His face is projected all over the scenery, almost as voluminously as images of Lulu; thus we are prompted to examine what kind of man he was. The South African visual artist William Kentridge set this production in Berg’s time (the 1920s) and used Weimar-era German art. This might lead the viewer to believe the opera is an extension of Berg’s biography, but that certainly was not the case.

Rather, Berg was intellectually intrigued by the writings of Frank Wedekind (the author of Spring Awakening, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box) and set his Lulu stories to music, utilizing some traditions of old composers, like canzonetta, cavatina and sonata, mixed with the new atonality of his mentor, Arnold Schoenberg.

Berg rejected traditional keys and assigned each of his main characters a row of twelve notes, each to be given equal importance before returning to start the row again. Early critics called this cacophony. Berg’s music has such unusual relationships and harmonic ingenuity that listeners accustomed to simpler music might balk. It’s brainy music, much of it subtle, revealing its beauty only with repeated hearings.

Lulu is the story of an amoral young woman who leads a series of admirers to their bloody destruction before she is in turn killed by Jack the Ripper. The drama, like the music, is more intellectual than lurid. We observe the tragedy of Lulu’s life without developing empathy for her, nor for her avaricious suitors and hangers-on. When Lulu has her throat cut in the final scene, we don’t feel grief. Rather, we feel that the drama has reached an inevitable and satisfying conclusion. Lulu herself was notable for not showing any grief or regret as her lovers died.

A contrast exists between Berg’s earlier opera and Lulu. Wozzeck is abused by his bosses, his doctor and his wife until he’s driven to an act of violence. We grieve for him. Lulu, on the other hand, is an object of voyeurism but does not earn our sympathy. Berg’s intentional objectivity creates a chilling, gripping effect.

Berg’s music does include some romanticism, and expresses despair over a lost way of life (a reflection of the feelings of Austrians after the end of their Hapsburg Empire in 1918.) The music has moments of humor. A last-act scene of stock market speculators losing their life’s savings is observed comically, as is a dramatic moment in Act II. Lulu has shot and killed her husband Schön. Now she’s about to have sex with his son Alwa but pauses to observe, “Isn’t this the sofa where your father bled to death?” And Alwa calmly responds, “That doesn’t affect me.”

In Acts I and II, Lulu lives high; in Act III she descends to work in a whore house. This dramatic progression, and the jagged music that accompanies it, was handled with intensity and considerable beauty by the German soprano Marlis Petersen.

Dr. Schön (the Danish bass-baritone Johan Reuter) found Lulu on the streets as a teenager and exploited her before later becoming her third husband. Alwa (American tenor Daniel Brenna) is a composer who is dependent on her even when she cheats on him. A Painter (tenor Paul Groves) tries to capture Lulu on canvas in a series of portraits and sexually-explicit sketches.

Mezzo Susan Graham was superb as the lesbian Geschwitz who was devoted to Lulu. Martin Winkler was impressive as the Animal Trainer who opens the opera, and also as the Acrobat who recruits Lulu to prostitution.  An old man (Franz Grundheber), who may be Lulu’s father, drifts into many scenes. 

The last act has many of the male characters return in different guises (played by the same men) as customers of Lulu. The last of these is Schön, reincarnated as Jack the Ripper.

Kentridge filled the stage with scraps of newspapers, those sexually explicit sketches, and Rorschach blobs of ink. The newsprint probably was an allusion to tabloid journalism, the profession of Schön. We also see a mannequin-like figure at a piano, who turns out to be a real person; a servant who slouches across stage pushing the scenery; and a look-a-like of Lulu who mimes her actions, somewhat like a mirror image.

All this was fascinating but a bit excessive; too much was going on at one time. I wanted to concentrate more on the characters and the orchestra, which was powerful at key moments and lyrical at other times. German maestro Lothar Koenigs did a marvelous job of interpreting this complex score.

This problem should be obviated when Lulu is seen in HD at movie theaters around the world. With closeups on the characters, the busy background activity will be less obtrusive.

By the way, its interesting to note that Berg wrote Lulu at the same time that George Gershwin was working on Porgy and Bess; two unusual operas, two disparate styles.

Text © Steve Cohen
Photos © Ken Howard / Metropolitan Opera
Support us by buying from amazon.com!