Word: opera
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Indeed Lulu, the tragedy of a dancer whose almost mythic embodiment of the erotic principle wreaks universal destruction and death, seemed to be the one modern opera that had everything: electrifying theatricality, sex, moral seriousness, virtuoso scoring-everything, that is, except a third act. When he died in 1935, Berg had completed the third act particella, or short score; but he left the orchestration incomplete and the act was never published. Ever since, opera companies have had to present Lulu in two acts, with a makeshift third act tacked...
...Paris, the opera world's most tantalizing other shoe has finally dropped. The Paris Opera presented the first-ever full-length Lulu, third act and all. To Rolf Liebermann, the Paris Opéra's general director, it was the culmination of a 30-year quest. To Conductor Pierre Boulez, it was belated "justice to a work that has been mutilated." To the black-tie audience of statesmen, artistic leaders, 200 music critics and assorted opera buffs, it was a triumph and, to some, a perplexity...
...triumph of the production was that it laid out the full span of Berg's intricate, marvelous score, seamlessly completed by Viennese Composer Friedrich Cerha. It was given an exhilarating performance by Boulez, with notably precise, transparent playing by the Paris Opera orchestra...
...shadow of Nazism. to the 1930s, in the shadow of Nazism. He and Designer Richard Peduzzi placed the singers amidst stark mausoleum-like sets in monochromatic blacks and grays, all vast, sterile spaces and icy slabs of marble. The results captured the harsh, merciless qualities of the opera perhaps too well. They were undeniably powerful, particularly in the hair-raising scene in which Lulu guns down Schon on an enormous staircase. They were also brutal and at times faintly ludicrous, like some bad dream by Albert Speer...
Erratic or not, Chéreau's solutions will set the standard of comparison for the many full-length productions that are sure to follow. The problematic third act has been from the start one of the opera world's chief prizes and puzzles. World War II brought an inhospitable climate for productions of Lulu, since the Nazis regarded it as entartete Kunst (decadent art), but thereafter it began to enter the international repertory. Approaches to other composers about finishing the third act had ended inconclusively. Opera managers vied for the chance to present the first complete performance...