# Just discovered that I may love Berg's Lulu better than Wagner's Parsifal...



## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Parsifal could have been my old favorite opera but after seeing Lulu tonight for the first time, Berg's opera may have displaced my previous favorite.

Oh oh what is happening? 

Sordid settings winning over heartfelt purity? :devil:


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

Well, I think _Lulu _can have this kind of effect on some viewers, for sure. It's one of my own favorites, too.


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## silentio (Nov 10, 2014)

I have been also a big fan of this work recently. My experience: to fully grasp the work, one should spend a bit more time getting acquainted to Frank Wedekind's the Lulu plays (at least _Erdgeist_, and _Die Büchse der Pandora_), as well as his idea about _morality of the flesh_. Before reading up intensively about Wedekind, I shamefully and wrongly dismissed Lulu as a filthy ***** no more no less, but now I come to acknowledge the complexity of the concepts behind this character. She is indeed one of the top three opera female characters I find the most intriguing, the other two being Kundry and Blanche de la Force from Dialogues of the Carmelites.

On a side note, I highly recommend the book _"The Operas of Alban Berg, Volume II: Lulu"_ by George Perle. This books sheds light on how clear-cut is Berg's understanding of Wedekind, and how the Lulu score is a very effective musical means to convey Wedekind's genuine ideas and visions.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

I'm not sure what you hope to achieve by filing everything into a hierarchy.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Something consumes our interest for a while, then something else gets our attention, then something else... Relax. You're just being normal.

Either that or you're becoming Dorian Gray. Better avoid using pictures of yourself as an avatar.


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Well, Lulu is indeed more interesting than Parsifal — or at least I find it to be. There's a lot more to opera than Wagner, thankfully.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

I've heard _Lulu_ but have never found it especially "interesting," except as a distinctive piece in opera history. Actually I find its plot and its central character - actually, all of its characters - repugnant or simply dreary, and I'm unmoved by the decadent milieu of amorality and mayhem. Aside from its musical ingenuity, what is the attraction?


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## Morimur (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I've heard _Lulu_ but have never found it especially "interesting," except as a distinctive piece in opera history. Actually I find its plot and its central character - actually, all of its characters - repugnant or simply dreary, and I'm unmoved by the decadent milieu of amorality and mayhem. Aside from its musical ingenuity, what is the attraction?


The music, what else?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Heck. Wozzeck is better than both of them.


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## Couchie (Dec 9, 2010)

In Act II of Parisfal there's a moment when the transfigured Kundry's voice calls out as if floating on the air: "Parsifal! Weile!", followed by the striking of a most subtle and heavenly chord: Parsifal's memory first stirs. 

That single chord is better than the entire output of Brahms.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

Couchie said:


> In Act II of Parisfal there's a moment when the transfigured Kundry's voice calls out as if floating on the air: "Parsifal! Weile!", followed by the striking of a most subtle and heavenly chord: Parsifal's memory first stirs.
> 
> That single chord is better than the entire output of Brahms.


You're the man Couchie


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## dgee (Sep 26, 2013)

Woodduck said:


> I've heard _Lulu_ but have never found it especially "interesting," except as a distinctive piece in opera history. Actually I find its plot and its central character - actually, all of its characters - repugnant or simply dreary, and I'm unmoved by the decadent milieu of amorality and mayhem. Aside from its musical ingenuity, what is the attraction?


Mystery, excitement, suspense, fear, biting one-liners, the bizarre, and as you rightly point out "the decadent milieu of amorality and mayhem" - expressionism! Lulu's intoxicating, if that's your thing


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

dgee said:


> Mystery, excitement, suspense, fear, biting one-liners, the bizarre, and as you rightly point out "the decadent milieu of amorality and mayhem" - expressionism! Lulu's intoxicating, if that's your thing


Yes, I suppose it would have to be one's thing. So far I find the little tart's charms resistible, and given what happens to the men in her life that may be advantageous.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Woodduck said:


> Yes, I suppose it would have to be one's thing. So far I find the little tart's charms resistible, and given what happens to the men in her life that may be advantageous.


The music's gorgeous and thrilling, though. Even if I did find the libretto as distasteful and uninteresting as you do, I'd still love it just for that.


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2015)

Mahlerian said:


> The music's gorgeous and thrilling, though.


Imagine a world where that's enough for some people...

Luckily, even when the music isn't allowed to answer for itself, you have an opera like Lulu where the libretto and the music are so heavily intertwined and well-thought out that one couldn't possibly...

Oh forget it.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

nathanb said:


> Imagine a world where that's enough for some people...
> 
> Luckily, even when the music isn't allowed to answer for itself, you have an opera like Lulu where the libretto and the music are so heavily intertwined and well-thought out that one couldn't possibly...
> 
> Oh forget it.


I believe we're already in a world where that's enough for some people.

Imagine a world where some other people just don't care for it.

We're in that world too.

"Chacun..."


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Couchie said:


> In Act II of Parisfal there's a moment when the transfigured Kundry's voice calls out as if floating on the air: "Parsifal! Weile!", followed by the striking of a most subtle and heavenly chord: Parsifal's memory first stirs.
> 
> That single chord is better than the entire output of Brahms.


Glad you're not given to sweeping statements!


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## Marschallin Blair (Jan 23, 2014)

Woodduck said:


> I believe we're already in a world where that's enough for some people.
> 
> Imagine a world where some other people just don't care for it.
> 
> ...


My aesthetic world is a _Weltanschauung_ of nobility, beauty, freedom, and adventure.

I haven't the time of day for the ultramundane, let alone the sordid.


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## Albert7 (Nov 16, 2014)

Marschallin Blair said:


> My aesthetic world is a _Weltanschauung_ of nobility, beauty, freedom, and adventure.
> 
> I haven't the time of day for the ultramundane, let alone the sordid.




I really relish the sordid. it reminds me of my hometown of New York City


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## Guest (Feb 21, 2015)

Woodduck said:


> I believe we're already in a world where that's enough for some people.
> 
> Imagine a world where some other people just don't care for it.
> 
> ...


My apologies. You were talking as if the libretto ruined the entire thing for you. If you had just said you didn't like the music, well, there would have been no need for me to open my slow-witted mouth.


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## Itullian (Aug 27, 2011)

albertfallickwang said:


> Parsifal could have been my old favorite opera but after seeing Lulu tonight for the first time, Berg's opera may have displaced my previous favorite.
> 
> Oh oh what is happening?
> 
> Sordid settings winning over heartfelt purity? :devil:


Get treatment fast


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## schigolch (Jun 26, 2011)

I think that _Lulu_, even if it was (un)finished in 1937, it's still a work of radical modernity. Its beauty comes not from conventional Romantic sources, but rather from the way that the piece is staring into devastation. Into the abyss, and how the abyss is staring back to it.

I don't really agree with the notion that a familiarity with Wedekind's theater is really necessary to understand Berg's opera, or that Berg's Lulu is the same or a kind of extension of Wedekind's. Rather the opposite is true, in my view.

In fact, the story of Wedekind's Lulu was published in two parts, "Earth Spirit" (Erdgeist, 1895) and "Pandora's Box" (Die Büchse der Pandora, 1904), mainly by practical reasons, because on Wedekind's mind they were just one play (in fact, they were staged as just one piece, under the title of "Lulu", in 1913, cutting the last act of Erdgeist and the fist act of Pandora, and also the Jack the Ripper character).

To me, these plays have not aged well. Today, when the original scandal and the shock of the frank treatment of sex are so far behind us, only the skeleton of the work remains. In this case the Cinema and, of course, Opera have produced an artistic result much improved on the original. However, Wedekind's merit as the creator of a myth of our times, an archetype of modernity, is still there.

In the plays, Lulu is more a force of Nature than a real person. A kind of figurehead in the erotic imaginery of Mankind, remaining basically alien to her effects on other people. Shrouded in mistery, a primeval being.

In Berg's opera, she is more of a real woman, making her own decisions and the protagonist of her own life. Gifted with a halo of innocence, irresistible. When she loses that innocence, after killing Schön, she starts her decline and fall.

During her work in _Lulu_'s libretto, Berg watched Pabst's "Die Büchse der Pandora", and was certainly influenced by the movie. Very far from the cynicism and depravity we can sometimes find in Wedekind, he wrote that Louise Brook's Lulu was: 'an epiphany of Beauty in an insane world'.

Maybe, in this small dialogue of the opera is the key to this transformation of Lulu. When Alwa confess his love to Lulu, he asks her: "Do you love me, Mignon?". In Wedekind the answer is "I've never loved anyone". In Berg, it's just a straightforward "I don't know".


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