Arts & Events

West Edge Opera’s Music Director, Jonathan Khuner, has close family ties to the music of Alban Berg. Jonathan’s father was a string player who launched an international career when he performed in the première of Berg’s Lyric Suite Quartet in Germany in 1927. Later, Jonathan says he debated with his father over the respective merits of Berg’s two operas, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (1937). Judging from the passion for Lulu showed by Jonathan Khuner in bringing this difficult opera to West Edge Opera, I think he clearly prefers Lulu to Wozzeck.

This is a preference I wholeheartedly share. I have now seen Lulu five times, and it never fails to make a positive impression. Wozzeck, on the other hand, can drive me up the wall, as it did in a Vienna Staatsoper production I saw in Berlin in 1987. Since that time, I have assiduously avoided Wozzeck. However, when West Edge Opera scheduled Berg’s Lulu for performance in an abandoned train station in Oakland, I made sure to attend the opening night show, on Saturday, July 25. I was not disappointed. 

I have seen some great Lulus in my day – Anja Silja in San Francisco in 1971, the brilliant Teresa Stratas at the Met in 1981, and Ann Panagulias in San Francisco in 1989 – but I must credit local soprano Emma McNairy for her own striking interpretation of the role of Lulu in the current West Edge Opera production. As Jonathan Khuner says, Lulu is all about sex! Well, Emma McNairy as Lulu fairly exudes sex from every pore of her body, and she reveals all in several nude scenes. And, oh yes, Emma McNairy sings brilliantly in this terribly difficult, often strident vocal material. Berg wrote this opera in his twelve-tone style, and most of Lulu’s singing is quite dissonant, full of violent leaps and jagged edges. 

The story of Berg’s Lulu is derived from the so-called Lulu plays of Frank Wedekind, a turn of the 20th century German playwright considered a forerunner of German Expressionism. His Lulu plays are all about sex. More specifically, they are about modern society’s inability to deal with this primal sexual urge in anything resembling a healthy way. West Edge Opera’s choice of the vast, high-ceilinged main hall of an abandoned train station on Oakland’s Wood Street proved a dramatically appropriate venue for this opera about the moral decay of modern industrial society. My only reservation is that the supertitles, of which there were a huge number, were very faintly projected on the stone walls on either side of the stage, and they followed one another in all too rapid succession. 

In Berg’s opera, Lulu starts off as a lusciously beautiful young woman trapped in a loveless marriage with an older man. In the opening scene, after a brief orchestral Prologue, an artist is seen painting her portrait at the request of Lulu’s husband. When the husband leaves the studio, the painter makes a pass at Lulu, to which she responds with gusto. They get it on, when, suddenly, the elderly husband returns to the studio, catches them in flagrante delicto, and keels over with a fatal heart attack. Thus rid of her old man, Lulu marries the painter, a marriage facilitated by the enigmatic Dr. Schön, who sees to it that the painter becomes much in demand and earns a fortune. As the painter, tenor Michael Jankowsky sang with an almost Wagnerian heldentenor’s heroic tone, and in his marriage with Lulu he vociferously declared himself to be utterly blissful. However, Dr. Schön takes it upon himself to disillusion the painter by revealing that all the while he, Dr. Schön, has been Lulu’s secret lover. Shattered by this news, the painter stabs himself to death. Lulu has lost a second husband. There now follows a lyrical orchestral interlude. 

Soon Dr. Schön is ensconced as Lulu’s protector and lover; but he becomes insanely jealous of the innumerable lovers he imagines Lulu consorting with. In the role of Dr. Schön, veteran bass-baritone Philip Skinner was outstanding. Vocally, he sang robustly, and he fully acted the part of the jealous lover. Among the people he suspects as Lulu’s lovers are the mysterious old man Schigolch, sung by bass Bojan Knežević, and the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, sung by mezzo-soprano Buffy Baggott. When Dr. Schön discovers Alwa, his own son, and Lulu in flagrante delicto, he threatens to shoot Lulu. She wrests the pistol from him and shoots him instead. An intermission ensues. 

Part Two begins with an orchestral prelude, here accompanied by video material depicting the arrest, trial and imprisonment of Lulu for the killing of Dr. Schön. The Countess Geschwitz, slavishly devoted to Lulu, visits her in prison, exchanges clothing with her, and takes her place, thus allowing Lulu to escape. Now a fugitive, Lulu returns to Dr. Schön’s residence, is reunited with his son Alwa, on whom she works her wiles. In the role of Alwa, lyric tenor Alexander Boyer sang exultantly of his fatal attraction to Lulu, apostrophizing her body in musical terms as he ran his hands over every inch of her lovely form. Lulu, for her part, just seems to know how to survive by working her wiles on the next man who might protect her. Now she and Alwa decide to flee Germany together. 

Arrived in Paris, Lulu and Alwa are indebted to various bankers who have provided them money. They cannot repay their debts, but with the help of the mysterious Schigolch, who has trailed Lulu to Paris, they outrun their creditors. Lulu, Alwa and Schigolch then go to London. Down and out, with no money, Lulu uses the only asset she has – her body -- to earn a few bucks as a streetwalker. One of the johns she picks up happens to be none other than Jack the Ripper, sung by bass-baritone Philip Skinner. She haggles with him over her price, settles for half of what she initially asks, and for her efforts gets strangled to death, bringing Berg’s Lulu to a tragic but fitting end. As a closing remark, I must mention the outstanding staging of this opera by director Elkhanah Pulitzer and the brilliant conducting by Jonathan Khuner. Together with this excellent cast headed by the stunning Emma McNairy, they made Berg’s Lulu come vibrantly alive.