Alban Berg’s 1935 opera based on Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays is Lulu.
Berg’s Lulu draws on Wedekind’s Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora, the two dramas about the character Lulu. Berg wrote the libretto himself, adapting and condensing the plays into a modernist opera focused on Lulu’s relationships, social power, exploitation, and eventual destruction.
The opera was incomplete when Berg died in 1935. Its first two acts were performed posthumously in 1937, while the completed version with a reconstructed third act was not staged until 1979. Friedrich Cerha prepared the completion using Berg’s surviving sketches, allowing the full three-act version to reach the stage.
Lulu is often confused with Berg’s earlier opera Wozzeck, which was completed and premiered during Berg’s lifetime. The connection to Pandora’s Box is literary: Berg’s opera is not an adaptation of Hesiod’s Greek myth, but of Wedekind’s modern Lulu dramas, one of which bears the German title Die Büchse der Pandora.