This Week in Classical Music: February 19, 2024. Alban Berg, Part III, Lulu. Frank Wedekind was a famous (and controversial) German playwright. Among his more famous plays
were two, Earth Spirit, written in 1895, and Pandora's Box, from 1904, usually paired together and called Lulu plays, after the name of the protagonist. For a while, the plays were banned for presumed obscenity. Berg saw the plays in the early 1900s in Berlin, with Wedekind himself playing Jack the Ripper in Pandora's Box. He was much taken by the plays, and some quarter century later, following the success of his first opera, Wozzeck, decided to write another one, based on Wedekind’s plays. The storyline of the plays is convoluted: Lulu, an impoverished girl, is saved by a rich publisher, Dr. Schön, from life on the streets. Schön brings her up and makes her his lover. Later, he marries Lulu off to one Dr. Goll. The painter Schwarz gets involved; Lulu seduces him, and poor Dr. Goll dies of a heart attack upon learning of Lulu’s betrayal. Lulu marries painter Schwarz while remaining Dr. Schön’s mistress. Dr. Schön tells Schwarz about Lulu’s past; overwhelmed, Schwarz kills himself. Eventually, Lulu marries Dr. Schön but is unfaithful to him, sleeping with Schön’s son Alwa and other men and women. Once Schön discovers her affairs, he gives Lulu a gun to kill herself - but instead, she shoots him. Lulu is imprisoned at the end of Earth Spirit. In Pandora's Box, Lulu escapes from prison with help from her lesbian lover and marries Alwa, Dr. Schön’s son, (whose father Lulu killed in cold blood). She’s then blackmailed by her former companions and subsequently loses all her money when a certain company’s shares, Lulu’s main asset, become worthless. Lulu and Alwa move to London; destitute, she works as a streetwalker. One of her clients kills Alwa, and eventually, Lulu herself is killed by Jack the Ripper.
By 1929, when Berg started working on Lulu, he was financially secure and quite famous, thanks to the popularity of Wozzeck. He used Wedekind’s Earth Spirit to write the libretto for Act I and part of Act II, and Pandora's Box for the rest of what he planned as a three-act opera. He worked on it for the next five years and mostly completed it in what’s called a “short score,” without complete orchestration, in 1934. By then the Naxis were in power and the cultural situation had changed dramatically. Berg’s position was difficult on two accounts: first, because of the kind of music he was composing (by now not just atonal but 12-tonal) – the Nazis considered it “Entartete,” that is “Degenerate.” And secondly, he was a pupil of a famous Jewish composer, Schoenberg, and that, in the eyes of the regime, tainted him even more. Wozzeck was banned (Erich Kleiber conducted the last performance of the opera in November of 1932), practically none of his music was being performed, and Berg’s financial situation was precarious. In January of 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg a violin concerto; financially, that was of great help and the concerto, dedicated to the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, who died of polio, became one of Berg’s most successful compositions.
Understanding that Lulu most likely wouldn’t be staged in Germany – or anywhere else – anytime soon, Berg decided to write a suite for soprano and orchestra based on the opera, the so-called Lulu Suite. Erich Kleiber performed it in November of 1934, it was well received by the public but the level of condemnation by Goebbels and his underlings was such that Kleiber was not only forced to resign from the Berlin Opera but emigrated from Germany. Berg continued working on the orchestration of Lulu but never completed it: in November of 1935 he was bitten by an insect, that developed into a furuncle, which led to blood poisoning. Berg died on Christmas Eve of 1935. In 1979, the Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration of the third act; this became the standard version of Lulu.
Here is Berg’s Lulu Suite. It’s performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle conducting. Arleen Auger is the soprano.
Alban Berg, Part III, 2024
This Week in Classical Music: February 19, 2024. Alban Berg, Part III, Lulu. Frank Wedekind was a famous (and controversial) German playwright. Among his more famous plays
By 1929, when Berg started working on Lulu, he was financially secure and quite famous, thanks to the popularity of Wozzeck. He used Wedekind’s Earth Spirit to write the libretto for Act I and part of Act II, and Pandora's Box for the rest of what he planned as a three-act opera. He worked on it for the next five years and mostly completed it in what’s called a “short score,” without complete orchestration, in 1934. By then the Naxis were in power and the cultural situation had changed dramatically. Berg’s position was difficult on two accounts: first, because of the kind of music he was composing (by now not just atonal but 12-tonal) – the Nazis considered it “Entartete,” that is “Degenerate.” And secondly, he was a pupil of a famous Jewish composer, Schoenberg, and that, in the eyes of the regime, tainted him even more. Wozzeck was banned (Erich Kleiber conducted the last performance of the opera in November of 1932), practically none of his music was being performed, and Berg’s financial situation was precarious. In January of 1935, the American violinist Louis Krasner commissioned Berg a violin concerto; financially, that was of great help and the concerto, dedicated to the 18-year-old daughter of Alma Mahler and the architect Walter Gropius, who died of polio, became one of Berg’s most successful compositions.
Understanding that Lulu most likely wouldn’t be staged in Germany – or anywhere else – anytime soon, Berg decided to write a suite for soprano and orchestra based on the opera, the so-called Lulu Suite. Erich Kleiber performed it in November of 1934, it was well received by the public but the level of condemnation by Goebbels and his underlings was such that Kleiber was not only forced to resign from the Berlin Opera but emigrated from Germany. Berg continued working on the orchestration of Lulu but never completed it: in November of 1935 he was bitten by an insect, that developed into a furuncle, which led to blood poisoning. Berg died on Christmas Eve of 1935. In 1979, the Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration of the third act; this became the standard version of Lulu.
Here is Berg’s Lulu Suite. It’s performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra with Simon Rattle conducting. Arleen Auger is the soprano.