About the work
Lulu is an opera by Alban Berg after Frank Wedekind's "Lulu" plays, left unfinished at Berg's death in 1935, first performed in two acts in 1937 and in the completed three-act version in 1979. It is a major work of twelve-tone opera and a dazzling psychogram of desire and destruction.
Plot
Lulu, a fascinating, amoral woman of enigmatic erotic attraction, rises socially through a series of men while dragging them to ruin: husbands die, lovers destroy themselves. After murdering her husband Dr Schön she is arrested, escapes, and sinks into ever deeper misery. In the third act, impoverished and stranded as a prostitute in London, Lulu is murdered by one of her clients—Jack the Ripper—while the devoted Countess Geschwitz tries in vain to save her.
Cultural significance
Lulu is, alongside Wozzeck, Berg's second operatic masterpiece and one of the most important operas of the Second Viennese School. Its strictly through-composed twelve-tone technique combines with great dramatic and sensual effect and an artful mirror symmetry of form. The work addresses gender, desire, exploitation, and social hypocrisy and is regarded as a fascinating, ambiguous study of one of the most enigmatic female figures in operatic history.