Alban Berg composed the opera Lulu, whose title character is linked to Pandora’s Box.
Berg’s Lulu is a three-act opera based on Frank Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box. Berg began composing it in 1929, but he died in 1935 before completing the third act. A completed version was later prepared using material Berg left behind.
The opera premiered in an incomplete two-act form in 1937 in Zurich. The full three-act version was first performed in 1979, after Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration of the final act.
Like Pabst’s film, the opera is not a literal retelling of Hesiod’s Pandora myth. Its Lulu belongs to Wedekind’s modern dramatic world, though the Pandora title provides the symbolic link.