Expected to be a hit at the Fifth Beijing Music Festival, the Helikon Opera Theatre from Moscow will present Alban Berg's "Lulu," one of the world's most controversial operas, for the first time in Asia at the Century Theatre tomorrow and Wednesday.
"The heroine Lulu is a prostitute and the social implications of performing this work go far beyond the opera itself, wherever it is staged in the world today," said Yu Long, the artistic director for the Beijing Music Festival.
Festival directors agree that the theatre's performance will certainly raise some Beijing eyebrows.
"To some extent, we have taken risks in inviting the Helikon Opera Theatre to perform in Beijing, because it is neither commercial nor familiar to opera-goers, and could even be considered too different for lovers of classical opera. Even IMG, the theatre's agent, was amazed by our plans to bring 'Lulu' to China," said Zeng Wei, programme director of Beijing Music Festival. "But we want to promote contemporary opera at the Beijing Music Festival after we successfully brought the classic 'Carmen,' 'Tosca' and 'Nabucco' to the capital," he said.
Yu said he hopes "Lulu" will broaden the horizons of Chinese opera goers.
"The company presents benchmark productions that others dare not attempt, I am sure it will live up to audiences' expectations," he said.
Beijing is the last city in Helikon's "Lulu" tour after performing in Barcelona, Hamburg and Berlin.
Cutting edge theatre
"Helikon" is the name for the mountain home of the ancient Greek god Apollo and his muses. It is also the word for a tuba-like brass and wind instrument invented in Russia in the first half of the 19th century.
Helikon is the theatre's namesake, because the company is also an extraordinary instrument, partners say.
The opera theater's productions are stylish and rebellious.
Only here you can see "Carmen" singing in the backyard of a contemporary trash dump; "Die Fledermaus" performed in the interior of musical town with Prince Orlofsky inviting the stars of Russian stage to his fairy tale ball; and "Aida" taking place in World War II.
The Helikon Opera Theatre strives to surprise the audience with novelty and daring concepts, not to mention the brilliant vocal and dramatic performances.
The Russian company has achieved considerable popularity among opera-goers in Moscow and abroad who appreciate the vitality of its productions, their innovative interpretations and their attention to a psychological dimension in the roles.
Daring composer
The controversial opera was scored by Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885-1935), whose music represents a flexible, emotionally intense use of the 12-tone system of composition.
Born in Vienna as son of a bookseller, Berg wrote songs as a youth but had no serious musical education before his lessons with Arnold Schoenberg, which began in 1904. Schoenberg was the composer who pioneered and championed the "serialism," or "12-note" method of composition.
Berg treated the 12-tone method quite freely, integrating into it techniques and forms from 17th, 18th, and 19th century music.
In May 1914, Berg saw a performance of Georg Buchner's play "Wozzeck," about the humiliation and destruction of a simple soldier, from which his first opera "Wozzeck" was born in 1925. Though many critics called it apathetic, "Wozzeck" is still a marvelous piece and an unmatched example of expressionist opera, experts have said.
"Lulu" is Berg's second opera. Like "Wozzeck," he made his own libretto out of stage material, this time choosing two plays by Frank Wedekind, whom he had long admired for his views on sexuality, "Erdgeist" (1895) and "Pandora's Box" (1901).
Started in 1929, the development of "Lulu" was twice interrupted by commissioned works and remained unfinished when Berg died. Friedrich Cerha later gained permission to complete Act Three. The complete "Lulu" was first performed in Paris in 1979.
The suite, in six movements of increasingly extreme tempo, uses the 12-note serial along with other material in projecting a quasi-operatic development towards catastrophe and annulment.
"Lulu" is a challenge both to opera-goers and staff at the Central Opera House of China, who are trying to translate the liberto into Chinese to help the audience understand the opera better.
"It is really hard for me to translate every line of the liberto into Chinese according to the score," said Jing Yingxin.
The designs by Igor Nezhny and Tatiana Tuliebeva consist of interlocking human-shaped trolleys made of mirrored plastic, which create the illusion of space and mirror the lives of Lulu and everyone else in the play.
There are no stunts and no changes to the period or setting - everything is concentrated on the performances and the appalling way that human beings are capable of treating each other.
The opera will also make use of film in theatre by incorporating a video into the show.
Director Dmitry Bertman mines the darkest recesses of the human mind. As audiences will be told in the prologue, each character mirrors a particular animal showing the utter bestiality of human relationships laid bare stage.
Soprano Marina Andreeva will star as Lulu.
"No finer casting for the title role could be imagined than Andreeva, a high-set lyric soprano whose acting skills would not be out of place in the straight theatre, (and is) blessed with the natural good looks to pull-off the role," Acclaimed Neil McGowan, a theatre critic in Moscow.
(China Daily October 28, 2002)
