Lulu is the Alban Berg opera adapted from Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays linked to Pandora’s Box.
Berg’s Lulu is a two-act opera based primarily on Wedekind’s Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. The work follows the same central character associated with the 1929 film, although the opera has its own musical language, structure, and performance history. Berg composed the opera in the twentieth century, and it became one of the major modernist works for the stage.
The opera’s relationship to Pandora is indirect. Wedekind’s second play supplies the title Pandora’s Box, while Berg transforms both dramas into a large-scale operatic treatment. The story explores desire, power, violence, social status, and the destructive consequences surrounding Lulu.
Berg died before fully completing the third act. Friedrich Cerha later completed the orchestration from Berg’s surviving materials, and the complete three-act version was first performed in 1979. That completion history is why productions may mention both a two-act version and the completed three-act score.