Alban Berg created the opera Lulu, based on Frank Wedekind’s plays including Pandora’s Box.
Lulu is an unfinished opera by Austrian composer Alban Berg. Its libretto draws on Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, the two dramas that tell the story of Lulu’s rise, relationships, and collapse. Berg transformed the controversial stage material into a large-scale modernist opera.
Berg completed the first two acts and much of the third, but he died in 1935 before finishing the score. The third act was later completed by Friedrich Cerha using Berg’s surviving sketches and drafts. The completed version was first performed in 1979 at the Paris Opera.
The opera’s title can cause confusion because Pandora’s Box is both a Wedekind play and a source text for Berg’s Lulu. Berg’s work is not an opera directly retelling the Greek myth. Instead, it uses Wedekind’s modern Lulu narrative, whose title and themes echo the Pandora tradition.