About the work
Frank Wedekind's tragedy of 1904 forms, together with "Erdgeist" (Earth Spirit), the two-part Lulu cycle. On account of its drastic portrayal of female sexuality and violence, the play was banned at its Nuremberg premiere and was first performed only semi-legally in Vienna in 1905. Alban Berg turned the material into the opera "Lulu" in 1937.
Plot
Lulu, having escaped from prison, flees through Europe with Count Escerny and Countess Geschwitz. From Paris her descent leads to London, where she scrapes by as a streetwalker. In a run-down attic room she encounters Jack the Ripper, who murders her and the Countess Geschwitz, who is devoted to her. Lulu's death is the consequence of a world that cannot endure her erotic power without destroying it.
Cultural significance
Die Büchse der Pandora is regarded as a key work of Expressionism and a radical break with the conventional portrayal of female figures. With Lulu, Wedekind created one of the most significant female roles of the German stage — at once a screen for male desire and male guilt. Besides Alban Berg's opera, the play inspired G. W. Pabst's silent-film classic of 1929 with Louise Brooks, and it is still regularly performed on German-language stages.