Word: berge
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Berg's masterpiece is done justice in Santa...
When the Paris Opéra presented the world premiere of Alban Berg's complete Lulu in February, one of the masterpieces of 20th century opera stood revealed at last. Or did it? Berg left the orchestration of the third and final act unfinished at his death in 1935. For years the work had to be performed in truncated form. In Paris, Conductor Pierre Boulez unveiled the full score as completed by Viennese Composer Friedrich Cerha. But Director Patrice Chéreau's eccentric staging reflected as much Chéreau as Berg, and many of the composer...
...full-length Lulu is being given its first U.S. performances by the venturesome Santa Fe Opera. Some of the vocal panache and soaring emotion of the Paris production may be missing, but little else is. The Santa Feans have staged the work with unusual care and intelligence. This time Berg the librettist is as well served as Berg the composer...
...Jacobs' translation). The mysterious Lulu is a dancer, an amoral enchantress, perhaps a force of nature. She first rises through society, then falls disastrously, as lovers contend for her elusive soul and all too accessible body. Throughout the opera, a large portrait of her hangs onstage-one of Berg's many specifications that were sometimes ignored in the past...
Michael Tilson Thomas' conducting matches the urgent pace of the staging without blurring the transparent intricacies of Berg's twelve-tone score. As Lulu, Soprano Nancy Shade sings her precipitous vocal lines strongly and accurately, which is more of an achievement than it may sound. But she only acts out bewitching allure; she does not embody it. During rehearsals, the cast screened Louise Brooks' Lulu in the 1928 silent film of Wedekind's Pandora's Box- which may partly account for Shade's tendency to play the role as a jazz-age vamp...