The Stage

Lulu

Published Wednesday 10 June 2009 at 12:45 by George Hall

Christof Loy’s new production of Berg’s great opera, designed by Herbert Murauer, is a dull and skimpy affair to look at. The set is a black box with some screens in front, the characters are uniformly dressed in black, and where Berg designed an interlude to be accompanied by a film at the halfway point, there’s nothing of the kind. On this level, it is a frank disappointment.

But there’s some serious purpose here, even if the approach is lacking in visual appeal and - even more basically - theatricality. This is more of a didactic commentary on the piece than an exposition of it. That some of the performances register impressively, nevertheless, is partly due to the quality of the artists involved, but mainly to the amazing musicianship and sheer expressive power that pumps through every bar of Antonio Pappano’s conducting and the superb playing of the orchestra. The fascination and beauty of the score shines through as much as its modernist orientation.

But two big interpretations - Agneta Eichenholz’s ordinary Lulu and Michael Volle’s dull Dr Schon - impede the show with their flat-footed mundanity. It is left to Jennifer Larmore’s involving Geschwitz, Will Hartmann’s three characters (especially his Painter), Philip Langridge’s trio of comprimarios and Gwynne Howell’s Schigolch, to paint in some essential drama. We get part of the way with one of the great 20th-century masterpieces, but not really far enough.