Lulu

Alban Berg’s opera, presented this season by the Metropolitan Opera, is based on two of Frank Wedekind’s three plays surrounding the character “Lulu.” The opera is a combination of the best stuff from EARTH SPIRIT and PANDORA’S BOX, the latter known best to the world as the infamous silent film staring the iconic Louise Brooks. The plays are rarely produced (I say rarely rather than never just in case somewhere in the world someone has actually produced one of the plays in the past twenty years, but I can’t find any evidence), though I saw a new musical comedy adaptation that never progressed past the Fringe Theatre Festival several years ago. My first encounter with the opera was in 1989 in a spectacular new production at the San Francisco Opera––Bob Mackie did the costumes, which caused me to gasp in awe and wonder a few times. I forget who directed that production, but it was filled with visually interesting images. The stunning oddity of the movie shown in the middle of the second act to depict Lulu going to court and then to jail underscored by the orchestra thrilled me. The racy subject matter, the Art Deco designs, the looming painting of Lulu as Pierrot appearing in every scene, the way Lulu kills everyone she has an affair with, the lesbian Countess, Jack the Ripper showing up in the third act to bring Lulu to her doom––all of it fascinated me. So, twenty years later I was excited to revisit LULU again and besides, The New York Times gave it a good review. However, I found this LULU to be sparse. They didn’t do the film, just played the film underscore and gave us a synopsis in the program to read instead of giving us something to see. The setting was turn-of-the-century and everything was exaggerated Art Nouveau. Lulu had read curly hair rather than the dark ‘20s Louise Brooks bob, which to me makes Lulu look like Lulu. Start hunting around the internet for photos of Lulu and you will see an awful lot of actresses sporting the Louise Brooks bob. There is something vampirish about it––something black widow. After all, Lulu is the walking devil, entrapping men into her web and doing them in. Red curly hair sort of softens the character. There was nothing as striking in this production as Bob Mackie’s red evening gown, slicked to Lulu’s body, with the back cut low and that black bobbed hair, coming down a grand Deco staircase. The gown here was white with beading. White is bridal and chaste. Was costume designer Jocelyn Herbert trying to be ironic or just trying to be pretty? Anyway, although the original story is of the 19th Century (the opera is 1936 and didn’t make its NYC debut until 1977), I prefer my LULU to be in the 1920s, where decadence is known to be running ramped, the clothes are sexier and lesbians are recognizable characters

Louise Brooks