Organization

Singer

Tenor

Stephan Rügamer

The painter

A black man

Bass-baritone

Michael Volle

Dr Schon

Jack the Ripper

Georg Nigl

The animal tamer

Bass

Rodrigo

Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke

The prince

The valet

The marquis

Soprano

Mojca Erdmann

Lulu

Mezzo-soprano

Deborah Polaski

Countess Geschwitz

Thomas Piffka

Alwa

Jürgen Linn

Schigolch

Baritone

Arttu Kataja

Ein Journalist

Alin Anca

Conductor

Daniel Barenboim

Stage director

Andrea Breth

Set designer

Erich Wonder

Costume designer

Moidele Bickel

Dramaturge

Jens Schroth

State Opera Berlin

Orchestra

Staatskapelle Berlin

Berlin

Germany

Schiller Theater

Gläsernes Foyer

Lulu - the "archetypal woman created to wreak havoc, lure, seduce, poison and murder without anyone realizing" - is the object and projection of men's desires and dreams. Destroying her lovers, Lulu is driven by cold-hearted love to cold-blooded murder and ultimately her own destruction. Alban Berg's last opera is based on Frank Wedekind's play, which was banned at the time as immoral. Due to Berg's sudden death in 1935, the opera remained a fragment and was now completed by David Robert Coleman, who prepared Berg's sketches on behalf of the Berlin State Opera Unter den Linden. He added a number of jazz instruments and created a new "Berlin version", which premiered at the Berlin Schiller Theater under the direction of Andrea Breth. In a disturbing sequence of sets, the director approaches the mythical core of the work and portrays psychologically precise, gruesome events, frightening and full of mysteries, framed by Lulu's death scream at the beginning and end of the work. Mojca Erdmann as Lulu proves to be ideally suited to this interpretative approach. In a skimpy silver lamé dress, she appears like an innocent angel; young, cold, more a mermaid than a shrew, as she masters the role's insane leaps and coloratura with incredible ease and hits the barely-singable high notes with incredible accuracy. She is joined by the gorgeous, physically impressive Deborah Polaski as Countess Geschwitz, the "inwardly smoldering" Michael Volle as Dr. Schön and Georg Nigl as a "meticulously articulating athlete". (Der Tagesspiegel) Daniel Barenboim and the Orchestra of the Staatskapelle Berlin deliver a finely calibrated reading by "turning the emotional aspects upside down, portraying the nuances of the work precisely, and all in such an alert, fiery and thorough manner in her chamber music making, that in the end one can only feel enthusiastic amazement." (Märkische Allgemeine)

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