Lulu [DVD] [2016]

Alban Berg is more clearly and clearly one of the greatest composers of the last hundred years. The completion of his second opera by Friedrich Cerha was one of the most important and selfless acts in musical history and, despite the inevitable quibbles, everyone agrees that he did a fantastic job. How can something constructed in such a cerebral way - more so than the more easily digested Wozzeck - work so fantastically on the mind and the emotions? But it does. Adorno said it was a work that worked more and more on you the more you listened or looked at the fascinatingly complex score (let's face it Adorno wouldn't have been able to experience a performance like this). With all respect to the Gyndebourne dvd of this with Christine Schäfer from the 1990s, which is still rather marvellous, this is a great and visually fantastic production that asserts Lulu finally as one of the very greatest operas. I saw it at ENO in London last month and it was a riveting experience, the cast here is if anything even better and I'm impressed that the Met rolled the carpet out to do something counter to its somewhat conservative reputation. Great singing and acting and of course the Kentridge visuals are fascinating. Possibly the dvd feels a little darker ( literally) than I experienced the show in the theatre but it's a fascinating and dark opera from a fascinating and dark time. Nothing we can do about this. But listen and watch a few times and I think it'll really grow on you and you'll see how great a thing it is. Kentridge says in the booklet that he wanted to provide a demonstration of why the judgement that this is the greatest opera of the 20th century was correct. He's done a lot to deliver on his message.

Lulu is one of the greatest operatic achievements of the twentieth century, and this is a remarkable production of it, which I first saw on a big-screen relay from New York and then later live at ENO in London. Some might find it overloaded with references and ideas, but for me it worked. However, there are I think difficulties in transferring it to the small screen, which inevitably cramps it.Marlis Petersen is physically and vocally satisfyingly acrobatic, but when this recording was made she was 48 years old, which one would hardly notice on the live stage, but sees in screen close-ups. Franz Grundheber makes (as one would expect) a splendid Schigolch. The rest of the cast, though all thoroughly competent, are not native German speakers, and somehow not quite so idiomatic. And I felt that Lothar Koenigs, standing in for James Levine, didn't quite manage to clarify this complex score and is not helped by sound engineers who have so foregrounded the voices as to lose much orchestral detail. All in all not a bad effort, but if you want to be bowled over by it try to play it on as big a screen as possible. Or go for the less flamboyant Glyndebourne version with Christine Schäfer, which I have reviewed in another place (https://www.amazon.de/product-reviews/B000189L10/ref=acr_search_see_all?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1).

This is best staging of Lulu I have seen. William Kentridge's use of video projected ink drawing and other images is a constant source of delight. And the images really add interest to the story. Normally I am a traditionalist over opera staging, but this opera is an avant-garde work, as are the Wedekind plays on which it is based, and perfectly suited to this approach. It is also one of few really great operas written in the 20th century.Musically I think the Glyndebourne DVD with Christine Schaffer is better, but that was a rather dull staging.

I can only echo the comments made by Murray Low in his review. I also consider Berg’s Lulu to be the greatest opera of the 20th century and productions like William Kentridge’s thankfully justifies this claim. Kentridge brought together a co-production incorporating the Royal Dutch Opera (2014), the Met (2015) and English National Opera (2016). Although, I heard broadcasts of all three, I only saw the live telecast in the cinema of this Met production and now have bought it on this two disc set (Blu-Ray and DVD).I am more than a little obsessed with this opera which is itself is a portrayal of obsession of sex and money. The completion of the third act by Friedrich Cerha in 1979 was a watershed moment in the history of the opera. From this time, there started a trickle that has in recent years become a steady flow of performances, many of these making it onto DVD. One you can certainly can avoid is, I am sorry to say, Daniel Barenboim, as the cuts made by David Robert Coleman for his ‘completion’ of the opera is tantamount to a butchering: replacing the prologue with a text by Kierkegaard and cutting the Paris scene (Act 3, scene 1). The Cerha completion is vitally important for the musical structure, for numerological structure (the 1326 bars in Act 3 was significant for Berg) and for the social critique Berg was making in the opera. In this Paris scene, there is a connection of sex and money. Bankers, an exploitative mother: all shallow vindictive people out to make money, blackmailing, and using sex as a bargaining deal. There is a boom on the stockmarket, followed by a crash: ‘Well! That’s how the world goes’, as the banker resigns himself to the loss. So with its portrayal of sex trafficking and capitalist exploitation, is there an opera more prescient?Now thankfully Lulu is being performed more regularly, there have been some excellent portrayals of the main role, including Mojca Erdmann in the Barenboim performance in spite of the dreadful cuts; others notable singer-actors include Julia Migenes, Barbara Hannigan, Christine Schäfer, Agneta Eichenholz, Patricia Petibon, and Marlis Petersen. The latest productions are not the hackneyed femme fatale, that many passed productions emphasised, but these Lulus are more nuanced. Hannigan’s Lulu is a failed dancer who becomes trapped; with Petibon, I see a link with Salome; for Petersen’s Lulu is as much a victimiser as victim, a damaged woman-child. After all, for Lulu, the men in her life want to control her. No more than Dr. Schön who in an opera of sociopaths and narcissists gaslights with the best of ‘em. He hands his love a revolver and tells her the best thing she can do is shoot herself. Lulu in her Lied sings:‘I have never wanted to appear anything else in the world other than what I am; And you have never taken me in the world for anything other than what I am.’This woman is fierce and free and will not be controlled. As with so many opera heroines though, things do not end well. Berg characteristically incorporates palindromes into the musical and dramatic structure, so that Dr. Schön's musical leitmotiv and singer return as Jack the Ripper to a blood curdling climax.There are many outstanding things one can say about this production. William Kentridge’s art incorporates thick black brush strokes on newspaper that echo the lithographs of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde and Otto Dix of Weimar Germany in the 1920’s. These drawings are projected onto large screens. Also worth mentioning are the costume designs, as well as the set designs by Sabine Theunissen. The overall impression is of Weimar era decadence, with more than a dash of G.W. Pabst/Louise Brooks’ 1928 Lulu film, Pandora’s Box.If you want a Lulu that is wonderfully cast and performed, I would opt for this. It doesn’t suffer from the excesses of some productions and bears repeated viewing. Neither does it suffer from the minimalism of other, albeit great, productions (ones from Glyndebourne and Covent Garden).

Exelent Lulu .

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