Alban Berg’s incomplete opera Lulu was completed for performance by Friedrich Cerha.
Berg worked on Lulu from 1929 until his death in 1935. He completed the first two acts and left much of Act 3 in sketches. The opera is based on Frank Wedekind’s plays Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora, which portray Lulu as a charismatic and destructive figure moving through a series of relationships and social roles.
The first two acts premiered in Zürich on 2 June 1937. For decades, performances used an incomplete third act or a concert version. Austrian composer Friedrich Cerha reconstructed and orchestrated the missing portions from Berg’s surviving sketches. The completed three-act version premiered at the Paris Opéra on 24 February 1979, conducted by Pierre Boulez.
Lulu uses a highly organized modernist musical language, including serial techniques, but its theatrical world is strongly connected to cabaret, expressionism, and the atmosphere of the Weimar era. The opera’s central role is written for a dramatic soprano. It should not be confused with Berg’s Wozzeck, his other major opera, which was completed and premiered in 1925.