Lulu (opera)

Lulu (composed from 1929 to 1935, premièred incomplete in 1937 and complete in 1979) is an opera in three acts by Alban Berg. Berg adapted the libretto from Frank Wedekind's two "Lulu" plays, "Erdgeist" ("Earth Spirit", 1895) and "Die Büchse der Pandora" ("Pandora's Box", 1904). 
The opera tells the story of a mysterious young woman known as Lulu, who follows a downward spiral from a well-kept mistress in Vienna to a street prostitute in London, while being both a victim and a purveyor of destruction. It explores the idea of the "femme fatale" and the duality between her feminine and masculine qualities. 
Berg died before completing the third and final act, and in the following decades the opera was typically performed incomplete. Since the 1979 publication of the version including Friedrich Cerha's orchestration of the act 3 sketches, it has become standard. "Lulu" is especially notable for using serialism at a time that was particularly inhospitable to it. Theodor W. Adorno wrote, "The opera "Lulu" is one of those works that reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it."
History.
Sources.
Berg was familiar with Wedekind's "Erdgeist" by 1903, when he was nineteen. He also saw "Die Büchse der Pandora" in 1905 in a production by Karl Kraus on 29 May, and was inspired by the introductory speech that Kraus delivered on that occasion. In Wedekind's two "Lulu" plays, now often performed together under that title, "Erdgeist" forms the basis for the act 1 and act 2, scene 1, of the opera culminating in her shooting Dr. Schön, while "Die Büchse der Pandora" forms the basis for the rest of act 2 and act 3, Lulu's imprisonment, escape and subsequent decline and murder.
Composition.
Berg did not begin work on "Lulu" until after he had completed his other opera, "Wozzeck", in 1929. Thanks to "Wozzeck"s success Berg had the economic security that enabled him to embark on a second opera. However, life for the musical world was becoming increasingly difficult in the 1930s both in Vienna and Germany due to rising antisemitism and the Nazi cultural ideology that denounced the music of Berg, Webern, and others. Even to have an association with someone who was Jewish could lead to denunciation, and Berg had studied with the Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg. "Wozzeck"'s success was short lived as theatre after theatre succumbed to political pressure and refused to produce it, Erich Kleiber's 30 November 1932 production being the last, while sets and scenery were systematically destroyed. "Wozzeck" was also banned in the Soviet Union as "bourgeois". Berg found that opportunities for his work to be performed in Germany were growing scarce and in September 1935 his music was proscribed as "Entartete Musik" (degenerate music) under the label "Kulturbolschewismus" (Cultural Bolshevism).
Despite these conditions, Berg worked on the score of "Lulu" in seclusion at his lodge, the "Waldhaus", in Carinthia. In the spring of 1934 he learned from Wilhelm Furtwängler that production of "Lulu" in Berlin would be impossible under the current cultural and political situation. It was at this point that he set the work on the opera aside to prepare a concert suite, in the event that the opera could never be performed, and also considered expanding it into a "Lulu" Symphony. This was his "Symphonische Stücke aus der Oper "Lulu"" ("Lulu Suite") for soprano and orchestra. Subsequently Erich Kleiber performed the piece at the Berlin State Opera on 30 November, and despite an enthusiastic reception by some sections of the audience, the subsequent condemnation by the authorities prompted Kleiber's resignation four days later and subsequent departure from Germany. In particular the reaction of periodicals such as "Die Musik" and "Zeitschrift für Musik" was exceptionally hostile. A few days later, on December 7, Goebbels made a speech equating atonality with "the Jewish intellectual infection," while the January 1935 issue of "Die Musik" suggested that any reviewer who had written anything favourable about the suite should be dismissed.
In January 1935, the Russian-born American violinist Louis Krasner, who had championed Berg's work in the United States, had approached Berg to commission a violin concerto. Berg was reluctant to set aside "Lulu" for this, but the money ($1,500) was welcomed, as Berg was in financial difficulties, financially and artistically ruined by the "Reichskulturkammer" (Nazi cultural committee). At first there was only a tentative agreement, but at the end of March he told Krasner he would compose it and had started some preliminary work. But it was the tragic death of eighteen-year-old Manon Gropius (the daughter of Walter Gropius and Alma Mahler, whom the Bergs treated as their own daughter) on April 22 that prompted Berg to set aside "Lulu" for the concerto, which he dedicated to her. The violin concerto was completed swiftly, between April and August of that year but the time he spent on that meant he was unable to complete the opera before his sudden death on December 24. 
The following portions of the third and final act were fully scored: the first 268 bars; the instrumental interlude between scenes 1 and 2; and the finale of the opera, beginning with the monologue of Countess Geschwitz. (The last two of these passages comprise the fourth and fifth movements of the "Lulu Suite" which Berg compiled for concert performance.) The rest of the work remained in short score with indications of instrumentation for much of it. Berg was able to hear the Symphonic Pieces in a BBC radio broadcast from the Queen's Hall, London, on 20 March 1935, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult and produced by Edward Clark. It was the first time he had ever heard any of the music of "Lulu". He was not to hear these excerpts performed live until a concert in Vienna on December 11, a fortnight before his death.