1/ Alban Berg was1st to bring Schoenberg's theories of atonalism and the 12-tone row into opera, choosing unsettling subjects to go with this unsettling new style. First came WOZZECK, and, ngl, I feel comfortable in WOZZECK's dramaturgy, "sound world" (overused term), and, yes,
https://twitter.com/MetOpera/status/1327022302794555399
2/ even its leitmotivic structure. LULU still presents more of a problem for me. I find a words-notes fit in WOZZECK that I don't find in LULU. To quote my own witticism, "LULU is WOZZECK w/o all the likeable characters." Be that as it may, Berg achieved acceptance for his style
3/ in a way that certain more recent experimentalists have not. LULU is about a young woman who is either the ultimate femme fatale, as she's often called, or the ultimate feminine blank slate, from nowhere, of unknown parentage, not even of any certain name, but in whom all men,
4/ to their cost, see what they want to see, from Dr. Schoen to Jack the Ripper (played by same baritone per Berg's instructions).
I'll look in on it, but I'll probably listen to the 1974 PARSIFAL on SiriusXM, conducted by the last great of the Furtwaengler-Knappertsbusch era -
I'll look in on it, but I'll probably listen to the 1974 PARSIFAL on SiriusXM, conducted by the last great of the Furtwaengler-Knappertsbusch era -
5/ William Steinberg. I saw this performance with my Dad. It was my first PARSIFAL and I really loved it. (Jess Thomas, Janis Martin, Thomas Stewart, John Macurdy, Morley Meredith, & James Morris.)
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