Description

On his death in 1935, Alban Berg left Lulu without the third act. In 1979, Friedrich Cerha was able to piece together a “complete” version using Berg’s sketches, and this was the only way that the work could be heard in its entirety. Since 2005, Berg’s music has been out of copyright, and the composer Olga Neuwirth decided to take a new and feminine look at the “mythical female figure”. To make the action more relevant to today’s social and political conditions she transferred Lulu’s story to America in the 1950s and 1970s. Neuwirth’s Lulu is black. The aspect of discrimination against women is now joined by racial discrimination.

In New Orleans in the 1950s, Dr Bloom has rescued the beautiful young black girl Lulu from the gutter and made her his lover. However, he does not want to publicly admit his liaison and marries her off to a professor. When she cheats on her husband by sleeping with a photographer, the professor suffers a fatal stroke. The subsequent marriage to the photographer also ends in death: he shoots himself when Bloom’s relationship to Lulu becomes clear to him. Lulu then succeeds in marrying Bloom, believing that he is the one she truly loves. But she is unfaithful to him, too. In the quarrel that ensues, she shoots Bloom dead, and is sent to prison. Women, too, fall for Lulu’s charm: the singer Eleanor loves her and makes great personal sacrifices to enable her to leave the prison. Lulu escapes to New York with Bloom’s son, Jimmy, where she works successfully as a high-class call-girl until the 1970s. But she becomes numbed to all feeling. When Eleanor leaves her as well, Lulu finds herself left alone to face the consequences of her profession.