About the production
Every man calls her by a different name. Because for them, Lulu is just one thing: a surface onto which they project their desires and desires, but also their fears.
The men who succumb to her and perish because of her cannot and do not want to know who Lulu really is. But therein lies the tragedy of Lulu, who kills Dr. Schön, the only person who really means something to her, and ultimately falls victim to the murderer of women, Jack the Ripper, as a run-down prostitute in London.
Director Willy Decker sees the opera's plot as an incessant series of battle scenes in which the enigmatic, man-eating child-woman Lulu is passed through all social classes until she finally becomes the victim of a sex offender in the gutter. Accordingly, the stage set is reminiscent of a circus ring in which Lulu's actions and life are presented, watched by a nameless crowd. Right at the beginning, even before the first note is played, we see the lonely and immobile Lulu in an arena that only appears to be dominated by her, in which the perpetual battle between the masculine and feminine is resumed at every moment.
As the 50-year-old composer's health, which had always been fragile, deteriorated rapidly, work on the work became a veritable race against death. In the end, Alban Berg completed the first two acts and only a small part of the third act. All the greater was the jubilation when Lulu received its world premiere in 1979 in the version completed by Friedrich Cerha, which is also being performed in this revival.
