MusicIn The Dyer’s Hand (1962), W. H. Auden noted that implausibility is the stuff of opera. Librettists revel in shopworn stage conventions—selected villains and nobles, cross-dressers and crossed identities, fluently managed hide-and-seek, violence and the rough stuff just at the right moment. Few operas take this to the extreme of Alban Berg’s Lulu. It stretches plausibility and even melodrama to the breaking point. But Lulu is more than just an expressionist experiment; it is also a commentary on opera’s melodramatic clichés, ironically gesturing toward many an opera past. In a very low bow to Da Ponte and Hoffmansthal, for example, Lulu features a “trouser” role. The libretto was drawn from two dramas by Frank Wedekind. Lulu is a young low life from some German city, without genealogy or credentials. She is called Lulu most of the time, but is also k ... This article is available to subscribers and for individual purchaseSubscribe to TNC (Print and Online editions) Subscribe to TNC (Online only) This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 19 June 2001, on page 59 Copyright © 2012 The New Criterion | www.newcriterion.com http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/berg-coleman-2170
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A review of Molto Agitato: The Mayhem Behind the Music at the Metropolitan Opera, by Johanna Fiedler, Covent Garden: The Untold Story, by Norman Lebrecht, Valery Gergiev and the Kirov: A Story of Survival, by John Ardoin.
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