Acclaimed
artist and director William Kentridge (The Nose) applies his unique theatrical
vision to Berg’s notorious femme fatale who shatters lives, including her own.
Soprano Marlis Petersen has excited audiences around the world with her
portrayal of the tour-de-force title role, a wild journey of love, obsession,
and death. Susan Graham joins a winning cast, including Daniel Brenna and Johan
Reuter.
One of the most
important—not to mention notorious—stage works of the 20th century, Lulu is the
drama of a young woman who sexually and emotionally dominates a wide range of
willing victims, both male and female. Herself a victim of society, she seems
to embody all the frightening aspects of the human condition, a combination of
primal instinct and distinctly modern amorality. Berg’s score employs the
twelve-tone technique pioneered by his teacher Arnold Schoenberg but in a
keenly dramatic way that makes it accessible to all kinds of audiences. Berg
died before completing Act III of the opera, and Lulu was first performed as a
fragment. Efforts to finish the score based on Berg’s notes were hindered by
his widow and only realized, after her death, by the Austrian composer
Friedrich Cerha, in 1977.
Tickets: MetOpera
Production: William
Kentridge
CO-DIRECTOR: Luc De
Wit
PROJECTION DESIGNER: Catherine
Meyburgh
SET DESIGNER: Sabine
Theunissen
COSTUME DESIGNER: Greta
Goiris
LIGHTING DESIGNER: Urs
Schönebaum
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