Word: erdgeist
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Dramatist Frank Wedekind (1864-1918), who was obsessed by the fury, the brevity and the desolation of the pursuit of sexual pleasure. As Wedekind's translator put it, "he dealt in 'the hellish drive out of which no joy remains alive.' " In both of his plays, Erdgeist (Earth-Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box), Wedekind centered this hell in a promiscuous woman, Lulu...
Contradictory Feminine. Berg based his tortured opera on two plays (Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora) by erotic, tormented Frank Wedekind (1864-1918). In German Playwright Wedekind's mind-and in Berg's-Lulu is an amalgam of all the contradictory feminine instincts: she is innocent and worldly, timid and rapacious, sentimental and heartless. Before the garishly painted curtain rises on a circus ring, a ringmaster invites the audience to witness the spectacle of the human circus, then calls: "Bring in our snake." In comes an assistant carrying Lulu, dressed in long black stockings...