William Kentridge returns to the Met for his first new production since the company premiere of “The Nose”, which caused a sensation when it opened in 2010. The inventive visual artist will stage Berg’s shocking masterpiece about a sexually irresistible young woman whose wanton behavior causes destruction for those who fall under her spell. James Levine conducts one of the operas with which he is most identified; he has led 30 Met performances of the work, including the company premiere in 1977. Marlis Petersen reprises her acclaimed interpretation of the title role, with Susan Graham as the Countess Geschwitz, one of Lulu’s most devoted admirers, and Daniel Brenna, Paul Groves, John Reuter, and Franz Grundheber among the men who fall victim to her charms.

“Lulu” is considered the most important, and at the same time ill-fated, opera of the XX century. In the score, written in 1928, Alban Berg developed the 12-tone technique (dodecaphony), the basis of which was created by his teacher Arnold Schoenberg. Berg made it more suited to the tastes of wider audiences. The composer died in 1935 before having finished the third act and the opera’s first premiere in 1937 in Zurich is in fact a presentation of a fragment of the work with some additional instrumental parts and mime. There were many attempts for the opera to be finished in accordance with the composer’s notes, but due to disagreements with his widow, this idea had not been realized until after her death in 1977 by the Austrian Friedrich Cercha.

„Ms. Petersen’s Lulu was rarely seductive in any genuine sense“, The New York Times