Lulu

Background

Source texts and treatment

Berg based Lulu on Wedekind's two Lulu plays: Erdgeist for the first half, and Die Büchse der Pandora for the second. Berg likely read Erdgeist by 1903. He saw writer–journalist Karl Kraus's production of Die Büchse der Pandora on 29 May 1905. In an introductory speech, which Berg admired, Kraus called Lulu "destroyer of all because everyone destroyed her". A former street child, she is an attractive 15-year-old and sometime dancer, prostitute, or mistress. Her old pimp Schigolch may be her father or sexual partner.

Berg repeatedly maps identities and reverses roles in the chiastic music drama, tying her three doomed husbands to her three fateful clients. He remakes Alwa, Wedekind's dramatist, into a composer, his self-portrait (Lulu's apparent antithesis). He may have modeled Geschwitz on his lesbian sister Smaragda, Dr. Schön on his teacher Arnold Schoenberg, the Painter on Richard Gerstl, and Schigolch on his wife Helene's possible father Franz Joseph I of Austria. As in Wozzeck, the physician may represent society. In Lulu, he promptly dies of shock.

History of composition process

Wozzeck's success funded Lulu, on which Berg worked from 1929, including at his secluded Carinthian Waldhaus (house in the woods). He was tied to Schoenberg, who was Jewish, as antisemitism grew. The Soviet Union banned Wozzeck as "bourgeois". Many theaters dropped it. The Weimar Republic's last productions, including the Berlin State Opera's under Erich Kleiber, were in 1932.

In Nazi Germany, Berg's work was labeled "cultural Bolshevism" and "degenerate music". Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler wrote Berg in spring 1934 that Lulu's Berlin debut was doomed, so Berg prepared the Lulu Suite (Five Symphonic Pieces) for coloratura soprano and orchestra. Kleiber led the suite's Berlin premiere on November 30, four days before resigning. Die Musik issued a harsh review, Nazi official Joseph Goebbels decried atonal composers' "moral decay", and the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik chided positive press as ideologically confused.

Violinist Louis Krasner offered Berg $1,500 for a concerto in January 1935. Berg hesitated to set Lulu aside but, facing ruin, had accepted and begun by late March. He heard the suite's 20 March BBC broadcast, produced by Edward Clark, from London's Queen's Hall under Adrian Boult. After his close friend Alma Mahler's daughter Manon Gropius died on April 22, he focused on the Violin Concerto in her memory, finishing by August. He attended the suite's December 11 Vienna premiere and died December 24. Lulu's third act, mostly in short score with sketched orchestration, was finished through its first 268 bars and in the sections used in the suite: the variations and Geschwitz's epilogue.

Composition

Like Wozzeck, Lulu is a tragedy of protagonists victimized by social forces.

Dramatic overview

Prologue: The Animal Tamer calls for the serpent, Lulu.

Act 1, scene 1: In a late-19th-century, vaguely Viennese studio, Lulu poses for her portrait. Dr. Schön and his son Alwa visit. They leave, the Painter ravishes her, and Dr. Goll, her physician husband, breaks the door open on them and drops dead, horrifying the Painter and leaving Lulu, who seems evasive, rich (transformation music). Scene 2: Her portrait sells well after she marries the Painter, but as the beggar Schigolch visits and Schön rejects her, the Painter uncovers horrifying truths and dies by suicide, prompting Lulu to insist that Schön marry her. Scene 3: Lulu and Alwa discuss the Prince, who wants to marry her, but amid another confrontation with Schön, she persuades him to break his engagement to a more respectable woman.

Act 2, scene 1: Geschwitz, Schigolch's clients, and Alwa all pay Lulu amorous visits. Her husband Schön confronts her jealously and demands her suicide, which he tries to stage, clasping a revolver into her hands and trying to make her shoot herself. She manages to shoot him dead and offers Alwa her fidelity in exchange for freedom before police arrive. Film interlude: She is arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned but escapes from an isolation ward. Scene 2: After plans to free her unfold and Geschwitz helps her contract cholera, Lulu returns disguised as Geschwitz, rejoices at her freedom, and rekindles her intimate relationship with Alwa, who idealizes her. They elope to Paris.

Act 3, scene 1: At Lulu's birthday party, blackmail, sexual exploitation, and financial ruin close in on her, leading her to manipulate Geschwitz and persuade Schigolch to kill one blackmailer. As the stock market crashes, she and Alwa narrowly escape police (transformation – variations). Scene 2: In London, Lulu survives by prostitution as perhaps before in her childhood, while Alwa faces his ruin. Seeking money, Schigolch finds a book of homilies in the coat of Lulu's first client, the Professor (the double of her first husband Dr. Goll), who discreetly pays Lulu in advance. Her second client, a self-proclaimed prince (the Negro, the Painter's double) refuses to pay, attacks Lulu, and bludgeons Alwa. Geschwitz, lovesick, contemplates suicide. Lulu is so captivated by or afraid of her third client, Jack the Ripper (Schön's double), that she accedes to his demand to waive payment. He murders Lulu and stabs the devoted Geschwitz, who dies singing to Lulu.

Scoring

Many cast members besides Lulu's husbands have multiple roles, including the Dresser–Schoolboy–Valet (mezzo-soprano breeches role), Prince–Manservant–Marquis (tenor), Theater Manager–Banker (high bass), and Animal Tamer–Athlete (bass buffo).

The characters have proper names, though Berg names only Lulu, Dr. Schön, Alwa, Geschwitz, Schigolch, and, in dialogue, the Painter Walter Schwarz. Wedekind's evocative names are sometimes applied to Berg's more archetypal roles (e.g., the Athlete Rodrigo Quast, the Banker Puntschu).

The onstage jazz band in act 1, scene 3 (instrumentalists can be drawn from the pit players) consists of:

In act 3, scene 2, Cerha's edition uses a small onstage ensemble that requires:

piccolo

flute

3 clarinets in B♭

bass clarinet in B♭

contrabassoon

Lulu is arguably the first seminal work of western art music that used the vibraphone, an instrument that had previously been associated with jazz. However, it has been used in smaller works by major composers prior to Lulu, such as Maurice Ravel's orchestrations of Don Quichotte à Dulcinée and Ronsard à son âme [fr] (1933 and 1935 respectively), as well as Darius Milhaud's incidental music to L'annonce faite à Marie (1932).

Music

Berg was obsessed with symmetry in his works and Lulu is no exception, the whole being perceived as a palindrome or mirror. Lulu's popularity in the first act is mirrored by the squalor she lives in during act 3, and this is emphasised by Lulu's husbands in act 1 being played by the same singers as her clients in act 3. The motifs associated with each are repeated. Berg also uses the Tristan chord to symbolize love and death.

The mirrorlike structure is further emphasised by the film interlude at act 2 at the midpoint. The events shown in the film are a miniature version of the mirror structure of the opera as a whole (Lulu enters prison and then leaves again) and the music accompanying the film is an exact palindrome – it reads the same forwards as backwards. The centre of this palindrome is indicated by an arpeggio played on the piano, first rising, then falling (shown here on the top staff).

Berg assigns specific vocal styles to each character with descriptive orchestral representation, recapitulative episodes to emphasise psychological significance and pitch-sets. Recapitulation includes having single singers performing multiple roles. The use of pitch includes the use of twelve-tone rows.

Cell z (also one of the basic cells in Bartók's String Quartet No. 4) is the basic cell of Lulu and generates trope I:

Although some of Lulu is freely composed, Berg also makes use of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. Rather than using one tone row for the entire work, however, he gives each character his or her own tone row, meaning that the tone rows act rather like the leitmotifs in Richard Wagner's operas.

From this one tone row, Berg derives tone rows for many of the characters. For example, the tone row associated with Lulu herself is: F, G, A♭, B♭, C, D, F♯, D♯, E, A, B, C♯. This row is constructed by extracting one note (F) from the basic row's first trichord, then taking the next note (G) from the basic row's second trichord, then taking the third note (A♭) from the basic row's third trichord, and so on, cycling through the basic row three times.

The tone row associated with Alwa is arrived at by repeating the basic tone row over and over and taking every seventh note;

Musicodramatic synopsis

The Clown beats a bass drum and cymbal, accompanying the Animal Tamer, who welcomes the audience and introduces the menagerie's animals, including the serpent, Lulu (Lulu motif).

Studio

She poses as Pierrot with a shepherd's crook. After news editor Dr. Schön and his son Alwa visit, the Painter chases and ravishes her (canon), calling her Gnädige Frau, Nelly, and Eva.Her husband, Dr. Goll, breaks the door open on them and drops dead. After some coy denial (canzonetta), she says she is rich. The Painter, horrified, questions her (duet). She repeats "I don't know" (Ich weiss es nicht, echoing Parsifal). The Painter tells Goll's corpse he would trade places (arioso).

Verwandlungsmusik (Transformation Music)

Apartment drawing room

Lulu's portrait sold profitably, the Painter gushes. Schön's engagement notice stings her. The Painter finds her ravishing (love duettino). The asthmatic beggar Schigolch rings and visits "Lulu" covertly (wind nonet). As they reminisce, she confides that she feels reduced to an animal. The doorbell rings.

Schigolch exits as Schön enters, renouncing her. They argue (sonata). "I belong to you", she cries (coda: love theme, monoritmica). Schön insists. Furious, she withdraws.

The Painter returns. Schön says he sent Mignon (Lulu), a 12-year-old flower seller, to an "aunt". He calls Schigolch Lulu's father. Lulu tried supplanting Schön's wife, so he married her off. He helped promote the Painter, who, shaken, agrees to restrain her. She returns.

The Painter groans behind a locked door. Alwa rings and enters, mentioning revolution in Paris. They break down the door: the Painter is dead. She screams. Schön phones police, mentioning the Painter's persecutory delusions. She suggests a newspaper extra to divert attention. The doorbell rings. She tells Schön he will marry her (Lulu motif).

Reception

Lulu has been performed in various incomplete forms. Schoenberg declined to complete it, and Helene later forbade completions of Lulu. When she died in 1976, Universal Edition published Friedrich Cerha's completed version, sometimes called the Paris version after its 1979 premiere. This version has often been performed since.

Incomplete forms

Erwin Stein made a piano–vocal score of act 3. Berg's widow Helene asked Schoenberg to finish Lulu. He had been struck by the underclass focus of Berg's operas and refused, calling the project time-consuming. Among some, Schoenberg objected to the antisemitic Journalist and Jewish Banker (act 3, scene 1). Berg had added derogatory language from antisemitic tropes to Wedekind's text, which Schoenberg refused to reinforce by finishing act 3, especially amid Nazism.

Stein, with whom Adorno and Cerha later aligned, had removed the material from the vocal score and was more charitable to Berg. Cerha called Berg's additions dramatic, and composer–scholar George Perle stressed that Wedekind specified the Banker's Jewish identity. Both mentioned Kraus, who polemically examined German–Jewish assimilation and influenced Berg.

Helene then barred others from finishing Lulu. For over 40 years, acts 1–2 were staged whole, and act 3 was sometimes replaced by the Lulu Suite's act 3 excerpts. Zürich Opera premiered Lulu this way on 2 June 1937. Director Heinz Rückert shot the mid-opera film as Berg specified. The Staatsarchiv Zürich has four film stills, but Rückert's film is lost. New productions variously remake, borrow, adapt, or omit the film.

On 4 September 1949, at the Venice Biennale, La Fenice staged Lulu's Italian premiere, with Nino Sanzogno conducting. In 1953, Gustav König led Essen's municipal theater company in the German premiere on 7 March at the Grillo-Theater, starring Carla Spletter, and in the Netherlands premiere on 7 July during the Holland Festival at Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg. The BBC broadcast the latter on 10 August. In 1957, Hamburg State Opera revived Lulu in a Günther Rennert production, led by Leopold Ludwig and starring Helga Pilarczyk, which played at the Paris Opera in 1960, London's Sadler's Wells in 1962, and La Scala in 1963.

The Santa Fe Opera's general director John Crosby tried to secure the complete version for the company's 1963 US premiere of Lulu, featuring more of the third act, with Joan Carroll (Lulu), George Shirley (Alwa), Donald Gramm (Schön), and Elaine Bonazzi (Geschwitz) led by Robert Craft.

In 1966, Anja Silja debuted as Lulu in Wieland Wagner's production at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, later filmed with Carlos Alexander as Schön. In 1967, the Metropolitan Opera revived Rennert's production, with Anneliese Rothenberger (Lulu), Gerhard Unger (Alwa), Toni Blankenheim (Schön), and Kerstin Meyer (Geschwitz) led by Ludwig. Electrola recorded this cast in 1968.

Completed version

Helene Berg died in 1976. New York's Metropolitan Opera staged the incomplete Lulu in April 1977, with John Dexter directing and Carole Farley as Lulu. In 1979, Universal Edition published Friedrich Cerha's complete version of Lulu, and the Paris Opera premiered it on 24 February at the Palais Garnier, with Teresa Stratas as Lulu, Pierre Boulez conducting, and Patrice Chéreau directing. The complete Lulu's premiere was a sensation, and its recording won that year's Gramophone Award.

Santa Fe gave the complete Lulu's US premiere on 28 July, with Nancy Shade as Lulu, Barry Busse, Alwa, William Dooley, Schön, and Katherine Ciesinski, Geschwitz. The Metropolitan Opera followed in December 1980 and released a DVD. In 1981, The Royal Opera staged the complete Lulu's UK premiere, with Karan Armstrong as Lulu, Colin Davis conducting, and Götz Friedrich directing.

In 2015, the Metropolitan Opera staged and broadcast Lulu, with Marlis Petersen as Lulu and visual design by William Kentridge. The Dutch National Opera (2015), English National Opera (2016), and Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (2017) restaged this production with new casts.