Alban Berg wrote the 1937 opera Lulu, inspired by the same plays as the film Pandora’s Box.
Berg based Lulu on Frank Wedekind’s plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, the same dramatic sources used by G. W. Pabst for his 1929 film. The opera follows the central figure Lulu through relationships, scandal, violence, and social collapse.
Lulu was unfinished when Berg died in 1935. The opera received its first complete performance in 1979 after Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration of the final act using Berg’s surviving materials.
The opera and film are separate works, despite sharing their source material and a connection with the Pandora name. Berg’s Lulu is known for its modernist musical language and complex twelve-tone construction.