Music into Ink
Lulu is one of the great operas of the 20th Century, written by Alban Berg in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s and left incomplete, in the orchestration, at his death. It is an opera about the fragility, the impossibility, the fragmentation of desire. It’s about Lulu, who during the course of the opera goes through many lovers and several husbands and each time, there is an impossibility. Lulu can’t be the woman that the men imagine her to be or project onto her. She can never fulfil the desires of being the femme fatale and the faithful quiet wife.
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+ Credits
Lulu
Composer
Alban Berg
Librettist
Frank Wedekind
Director
William Kentridge
Co-director
Luc de Wit
Projection designer
Catherine Meyburgh
Set designer
Sabine Theunissen
Costume designer
Greta Goiris
Lighting designer
Urs Schönebaum
Approx. 3 hours 22 minutes
World premiere
Opera House, Zurich, 1937 (unfinished version); Théâtre National de l’opéra, Paris, 1979 (three-act version)
This production
Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam, June 2015; Metropolitan Opera, New York, November 2015; English National Opera, London, November 2016.
Right Into Her Arms
2016
Kinetic model theatre with projected images, drawings and props
HD video, software and circuitry, electronic components, wood, steel, cardboard, found paper and found objects
300 x 244 x 125 cm
Running time 11 minutes
Video editing and construction
Janus Fouché
Software design
Janus Fouché
Model theatre design
Christoff Wolmarans
Mechanical design
Chris-Waldo de Wet
Scenography
Sabine Theunissen
Performers
Luc De Wit
Joanna Dudley
Dada Masilo
Music
Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate, performed by William Kentridge
Das gibts nur einmal performed by Zarah Leander
Anton Webern, Stück für Klavier, im Tempo eines Menuetts, performed by Hayk Melikyan
James Kok, Und die ganze Welt spricht von Nanette, performed by James Kok Tanz Orchestra
Arnold Schönberg, Mahnung (Brettl-Lieder), performed by Burcu Kurt (soprano) and Karlheinz Donauer (piano)
Making
Ink is the primary medium of the production. Sometimes, ink drawings translated into woodcuts or linocuts but essentially the vehemence of a black brushstroke trying to find some equivalent visually to the violence of the opera in the marks and the way they are used. It is almost as if ink becomes the black blood that is spilt throughout the production.
The set has to work in two ways. It has to work as the receiver of the projections but it also has to work as a theatrical space of the different rooms: the artist’s studio, the garret in London, the gaming room in Paris, Dr Schön’s house. And so the furniture and the flats and the walls have to both have an Art Deco attention-to-detail and finish in material and also work in a way that they can reflect the projected images.
Opera
Lulu is a nasty opera. Each time one hopes for a redemptive moment in one or another character, one’s hopes are dashed. When one thinks that Lulu is finally going to release herself into voluptuous love, she says to Alva, who has declared his love for her as he buries his head in her breasts, “Isn’t this the sofa where your father bled to death?” One of the wonders of the opera is our complicity as audience in Alva’s response: “It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I want to stay in this moment.”
Right Into Her Arms
Painter: Would you mind just lifting your skirt a little?
Lulu: Like this?
Painter: If I may…
Lulu: Behave yourself!
Painter: Let me gently…
Lulu: No thank you!
Painter: Don’t be so tense.
Lulu: Please keep your hands to yourself.
Drawings
Prints
Sculpture
Exhibitions
More
Credits
Lulu
Composer
Alban Berg
Librettist
Frank Wedekind
Director
William Kentridge
Co-director
Luc de Wit
Projection designer
Catherine Meyburgh
Set designer
Sabine Theunissen
Costume designer
Greta Goiris
Lighting designer
Urs Schönebaum
Approx. 3 hours 54 minutes
World premiere
Opera House, Zurich, 1937 (unfinished version); Théâtre National de l’opéra, Paris, 1979 (three-act version)
This production
Dutch National Opera, Amsterdam, June 2015; Metropolitan Opera, New York, November 2015; English National Opera, London, November 2016.
Right Into Her Arms
2016
Kinetic model theatre with projected images, drawings and props
HD video, software and circuitry, electronic components, wood, steel, cardboard, found paper and found objects
300 x 244 x 125 cm
Running time 11 minutes
Video editing and construction
Janus Fouché
Software design
Janus Fouché
Model theatre design
Christoff Wolmarans
Mechanical design
Chris-Waldo de Wet
Scenography
Sabine Theunissen
Performers
Luc De Wit
Joanna Dudley
Dada Masilo
Music
Kurt Schwitters, Ursonate, performed by William Kentridge
Das gibts nur einmal performed by Zarah Leander
Anton Webern, Stück für Klavier, im Tempo eines Menuetts, performed by Hayk Melikyan
James Kok, Und die ganze Welt spricht von Nanette, performed by James Kok Tanz Orchestra
Arnold Schönberg, Mahnung (Brettl-Lieder), performed by Burcu Kurt (soprano) and Karlheinz Donauer (piano)
