Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Busy Herheim - Lulu arrives to Copenhagen

Stefan Herheim --one of my absolute fave directors!-- is busy preparing the premiere of his Lulu in Copenhagen, which is supposed to be the operatic event in Europe this October. This will also be the first ever production of Lulu in Denmark.



8 shows series at the Danish Royal Opera opens next Friday, October 15, and Yours Truly will hopefully be there. ;)

After Copenhagen the same production [but with different cast] will travel to Den Norske Opera in Oslo where 10 more shows are scheduled between February and March 2011.
Moreover, the production will appear on the 2011-2012 program of Semperoper in Dresden.

Lulu is an interesting opera because of its superior quality of the score, its brilliant dramatic character, and because it is a female operatic counterpart to Don Giovanni.  Before his death in 1935, Alban Berg finished only two acts of this opera, but left a detailed sketch of the third act. The composer's widow, however, prohibited any completion and only after her death, Friedrich Cerha could work on the sketch and compose the famous third act. After many years of work (between 1962 and 1974) Cerha was finally able to show his Act-3 to the world and the first three-act performance of Lulu took place in Paris in 1979, with a huge show directed by Patrice Chéreau, with Pierre Boulez conducting, and with Teresa Stratas singing the title role.

Last summer in Salzburg we saw a full Cerha completion of Lulu (parts of Cerha's Act 3 are often left out). In Copenhagen, instead, we will see a different completion of Lulu -- the one by Eberhard Kloke composed in 2007-2008.

Danish opera fans and critics adored Michael Boder's conducting of Wozzeck last year and they are apparently happy to see him back for this Lulu.


Herheim fanbase will also be happy to know that Heike Scheele collaborates on this show as stage designer.


We are ready to discover Sine Bundgaard in Lulu. Good luck to her!


The above pics are © Miklos Szabo, whose photo gallery is available on the DKT website.


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