[Met Performance] CID:333606



Lulu
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, April 9, 2001

Debut : Christine Schäfer, Andrew Gangestad, Robin Blitch Wiper, David Brimmer




Lulu (26)
Alban Berg | Alban Berg
Lulu
Christine Schäfer [Debut]

Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper
James Courtney

Countess Geschwitz
Hanna Schwarz

Alwa
David Kuebler

Schigolch
Franz Mazura

Animal Tamer/Acrobat
Stephen West

Painter
Clifton Forbis

Physician/Professor
Mitchell Sendrowitz

Prince/Manservant/Marquis
Graham Clark

Dresser/Schoolboy
Jennifer Dudley

Theater Manager/Banker
Richard Vernon

Journalist
Richard Hobson

Servant
Andrew Gangestad [Debut]

Girl
Robin Blitch Wiper [Debut]

Mother
Diane Curry

Policeman
David Brimmer [Debut]

Clown
Abraham Marcus


Conductor
James Levine


Production
John Dexter

Designer
Jane Dutton

Designer
Jocelyn Herbert

Lighting Designer
Gil Wechsler

Stage Director
Paul Mills





Act III edited and orchestrated by Friedrich Cerha
Lulu received five performances this season.

Review 1:

Charles Michner in the Observer

Alban Berg's “Lulu” is perhaps the ultimate in operatic transfiguration. Based on two profoundly pessimistic plays by the German playwright Frank Wedekind, it is an opera that has, as used to be said about pornography, no socially redeeming value. Its title character is a girl from the gutter who rises to the social heights only to be sent to prison for murdering one of her husbands, and who dies at the hands of Jack the Ripper. The men in her life are, by turns, insanely jealous, weak of character, desperately greedy or shamelessly exploitative. But out of this material, Berg wove a musical fabric whose kaleidoscopic vividness of color, intricacy of musical ideas and rhythmic urgency make "Lulu" a good candidate for the 20th century's supreme work of the lyric theater.


The Met's current "Lulu" is a revival of one of the company's best older productions — a triumph of the house's pictorialist approach to masterpieces. More than 20 years after John Dexter's staging was first seen (in 1977), it looked, on [first] night, as good as ever, with the slightly exaggerated, suffocating clutter of its "fin-de-siècle" interiors and careful period costuming by Jocelyn Herbert, and its luridly oppressive lighting by Gil Wechsler. James Levine, who may be unrivaled among today's conductors for the highly charged security of his approach to Berg, was in the pit. The cast included such outstanding Bergians as James Courtney in the double role of Dr. Schön and Jack, Franz Mazura as Schigolch and Hanna Schwarz as the Countess Geschwitz. And in the young German soprano Christine Shafer, the production had a Lulu who more than held her own against her unforgettable predecessors, Teresa Stratas and Julia Migenes-Johnson.


I sensed that Ms. Shafer was suffering from a cold, and indeed, she canceled her second performance. But even though her voice sometimes had trouble projecting strongly, she brought something new and powerful to the role — a dangerous vacancy that went to the heart of the character as an object of fantasy, an unconscious catalyst for mayhem. Eye-catching in her copper-colored coiffure, refreshingly unkittenish in manner, she was never quite in focus — a quality that can drive men mad. Perhaps the highest compliment I can pay to Ms. Schafer is that she, the performer, remained invisible behind the beautiful blotter of her façade. Indeed the clearest image that I was able to draw from this disturbingly fuzzy-edged femme fatale was that of the closest thing to a Lulu in our time — Marilyn Monroe.



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