Opera “Lulu” in the Staatstheater Darmstadt: The woman as a secret

Something seems to pique the interest of the 18 women who come on stage before the first chord of Alban Berg’s opera Lulu has sounded. Gradually, the collective gropes its way towards the undead figures hidden under white sheets, covers them, the blood-smeared suitors, including the murdered Lulu, who was last a prostitute. Maybe her death was just a night ago, maybe almost a century since Alban Berg left his opera unfinished after Frank Wedekind’s tragedies “Erdgeist” and “Pandora’s Box” when he died in 1935. An exact time setting is not important, rather director Eva-Maria Höckmayr, together with the women who keep coming back on stage during the four hours of performance, re-examine the work in the version supplemented by Friedrich Cerha.

Lulu does not leave her position at the center of the stage until the middle of the second act. There, on a cube that can be a pedestal or an altar, everything revolves around her. And that in the literal sense: The revolving stage is constantly in motion, the men become satellites. The medical councilor (Thomas Mehnert) and the painter (Peter Lodahl) do not survive their short marriages with Lulu, nor does Dr. Nice, who arranged the connections and eventually marries her himself. What experiences the characters bring to this lineup is ultimately unimportant, what matters is how they relate to Lulu, whom every man gives a different name and looks at differently. The collective of extras sets a counterpoint to the fact that Lulu is only perceived as an object.