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2005.2
Lulu |
Music by Alban Berg (1937)
OPERA HOUSE
4 performances
February 8(Tue)6:30pm, 11(Fri)3:00pm, 14(Mon)6:30pm, 17(Thu)2:00pm
2005
Approximate running time: 3 hours, 35 minutes |
| Conductor: Stefan Anton Reck
Director: David Pountney
Scenery Design: Robert Israel
Costume Design: Sue Blane
<MAIN CAST>
Lulu: Sato Shinobu
Gräfin Geschwitz: Koyama Yumi
Dr. Schön: Claudio Otelli
Alwa: Nagata Mineo
Schigolch: Hartmut Welker |
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| Background |
| One of the greatest masterpieces in 20th-century opera, Lulu
enjoys immortal fame as the high-water mark of operatic art.
A composer of the Second Vienna School, Alban Berg left two operas,
Wozzeck and Lulu, both of which are performed as
part of the repertoire of Western opera houses today. Based on Frank
Wedekind’s dramas Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse
der Pandora (Pandora’s Box), Berg wrote a libretto for
the opera himself and composed using the dodecaphonic (twelve-note)
system. With its elaborate music, the opera successfully portrays
the wandering life of Lulu, a femme fatale. The Austrian
composer died in 1935 with Act III unfinished, and since Mrs. Berg
prohibited the completion and performance of Act III, Lulu
was staged as a two-act opera for some 40 years after it was first
performed in Zurich in 1937. The complete three-act version with its
Act III additionally orchestrated by Friedrich Cerha premiered in
Paris in 1979. Subsequently, it has been customary for the three-act
version to be staged, although there has been much controversy in
the past over the appropriateness of the additional orchestration.
The three-act version will be used for the NNTT production. Sato Shinobu
will take on the challenge of singing Lulu, one of the most difficult
soprano roles, which requires personal beauty and acting power as
well as singing ability. The conductor will be Stefan Anton Reck,
a young artist currently attracting public attention. His broad repertoire
ranges from Italian opera to contemporary works, and the performance
of Lulu at the Teatro Massimo di Parelmo was recorded live
and released in the form of compact disk. The director will be David
Pountney, a native of Britain, who has been the topic of conversation
in the past for his direction in Japan in 1995 of Madama Butterfly
based on its premiere version. |
| Synopsis |
| Lulu’s patron and former lover, Dr. Schön, a newspaper
editor-in-chief, arranges Lulu’s marriage to someone else to
break away from her bewitching powers. Her husbands, however, die
an unnatural death one after another with the first, a medical specialist,
dying of a heart attack and the second, a painter, killing himself
with a razor. Unable to free himself from Lulu’s domination,
Dr. Schön finally marries her. Around Lulu, who lives as free
and unrestrained a life as before, gather her dubious admirers, including
the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, the acrobat Rodrigo and the elderly
Schigolch, who professes himself to be Lulu’s father. And even
Dr. Schön’s son Alwa confesses his love for Lulu, and no
longer able to tolerate the situation, Dr. Schön demands that
Lulu kill herself with a pistol, but after an argument he is shot
to death by her instead. Lulu is arrested but successfully escapes
from prison as Countess Geschwitz takes her place. (The two-act version
ends here.) Lulu flees to Paris and then to London with Alwa, but
her fate follows a path of degradation. Ruined, she makes a living
as a prostitute, but one of her clients clubs Alwa to death and she
is finally killed by Jack the Ripper. |
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| <Conductor> |
<Director> |
<Scenery Design> |
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| Stefan Anton Reck |
David Pountney |
Robert Israel |
| <Main Cast> |
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Sato Shinobu |
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Koyama Yumi |
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| Claudio Otelli |
Nagata Mineo |
Hartmut Welker |
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