In Alban Berg’s opera Lulu, the title character is named Lulu. The opera adapts Frank Wedekind’s dramas Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora and follows the character through relationships, scandal and violence.
Berg began composing Lulu in the 1920s, but he died in 1935 before completing the orchestration of the final act. The opera received its first performance in an incomplete two-act form in 1937. A completed three-act version, using material prepared by Friedrich Cerha, premiered in 1979.
Lulu is sometimes confused with Pandora because both the opera and Pabst’s film draw on Wedekind’s Pandora’s Box play. However, Berg’s heroine is Lulu, not the Pandora of ancient Greek mythology. The opera is a major example of twentieth-century modernism and uses a twelve-tone musical language associated with Berg’s compositional style.