Last night at Lyric Opera we heard their new production of Alban Berg’s Lulu and I’m at something of a loss as to what to write about it. Basically, I thought it was a technical success but an artistic failure.
The sets and costumes, strongly reminiscent of G. w. Pabst’s 1929 silent film, Pandora’s Box, which, like Lulu, was based on two of Austrian playwright Frank Wedekind’s plays, were beautiful, actually rather stunning recreations of upper middle class Viennese rooms of the early 20th century. There were some interesting effects—images, many of which I believe were computer generated or at least computer enhanced, were projected on a scrim that covered the stage between acts and scenes. The singing was competent if not thrilling, which is higher praise than it sounds when you recognize how difficult a score Lulu has.
Special credit goes to Marlis Petersen, our Lulu last night. The role is exacting and grueling and Ms. Petersen handled the part well. My only criticism is that at times I thought she shrieked. Could that have been for effect? I’m not familiar enough with the work to make a judgment.
However. I found the the production remote, distancing, antiseptic as the mostly white sets. Things happened for no discernible reason. So what?
It would be hard to find two productions of the same opera that were more different than the Lulu we heard 20 years ago at Lyric starring Catherine Malfitano and last night’s. That production was gritty, erotic, and emotionally draining. This one was distancing, clinical, and technically excellent.
The season so far: Manon, The Pearl Fishers, Lulu. Advantage Manon.
The critics
John von Rhein like the production more than I did:
Let’s face it: Berg’s dense score, with its jagged vocal lines and elaborate musical acrostics, is not always easy to listen to. But a strong ensemble cast, together with conductor Andrew Davis’ lush orchestra, bring out the aching lyricism beneath Berg’s 12-tone angst. They make this first Lyric “Lulu” in 21 years an evening of modern music theater that will glue you to your seat despite the four-hour length.
The production is rather more straightforward, even conservative, compared with the Yuri Ljubimov extravaganza Lyric mounted in 1987.
Curran’s decision to update the setting to around 1935, when Berg wrote “Lulu,” made sense, given the social and sexual mores that prevailed in Europe back then. A skilled and probing storyteller, the Scottish director kept the dramatic line taut and moved the action along with the fluidity of cinema.
The positive effect of Kevin Knight’s handsome period sets and eye-filling costumes—an elegant fusion of Bauhaus and Art Deco styles brilliantly lighted by David Jacques—was marred by a technical snafu involving John Boesche’s video projections one trusts will not be repeated in the six remaining performances.
No snafus in last night’s performance.
As did Andrew Patner
Where Lyric’s 1987 production put the phantasmagoria of odd and fringe types in Weimar-era Europe into a dark box and frame, Curran gives us all white and bright rooms, until the opera’s dark final scene that heralds the arrival of Jack the Ripper, and lets the music and story carry the darkness of doomed lives, loves, and sexual couplings. The audience members become voyeurs as the cast offers fully three-dimensional and colorful performances within these shining spaces.
And what a cast — one wishes Berg could have seen and heard German soprano Marlis Petersen, whose vocal pyrotechnics and magnetism are matched by her complete physical identification with the downwardly mobile Lulu. Veteran German bass-baritone Wolfgang Schoene has owned the dual role of Lulu’s suitors Dr. Schoen and Jack the Ripper for decades, and he is in commanding form here. As the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, American mezzo Jill Grove has another Lyric triumph. Schoen’s son Alwa is a breakthrough portrayal for American tenor William Burden and American bass-baritone Thomas Hammons superbly solves the problems of the mysterious character of Lulu’s confidant Schigolch.
The Lyric’s staging isn’t apt to make many converts. As one would expect, Sir Andrew Davis’s command of Berg’s devilishly detailed and wholly un-hummable score is deft. But along with Paul Curran’s compelling stage direction, the Lyric has incorporated (double gasp!) movies. Ask traditionalists, and they’ll tell you this is surely a sign that End Times are upon us. If that’s the case, we’re going out with a mighty bang rather than a whimper.
John Boesche’s haunting black and white video projections – often ingeniously incorporated into the very sets – are little less than astounding. In one segment, a flickering melodrama unspools in silvery black and white as Lulu is arrested for murder, tried, convicted, imprisoned, stricken with some sort of near-fatal disease, hospitalized and caught up in an elaborate plot involving mistaken identities, daring escapes and Joan of Arc-worthy martyrdom. It’s a gorgeous silent film-in-an-opera, backed by Sir Davis’ impeccable orchestra and evocative of “Pandora’s Box,†the 1930 Louise Brooks classic that inspired Berg.
In title role, Marlis Petersen gives a galvanic performance as the ultimate femme fatale. The gifted coloratura makes the marathon vocal demands sound effortless. She looks every inch the vixen, from Lulu’s party girl days in the roaring 1920s of Weimar-era Germany to her forlorn end as a disease–riddled prostitute begging for work.
