Search - Herve Hennequin, Wolfgang Schone, Alban Berg :: Berg: Lulu

This is a "Lulu" of a performance, and first rate...

Ronald E. Smith | Portland OR, USA | 04/11/2008

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a "Lulu" of a performance, and first rate. The "Tate Lulu" is the third complete three-act German language version of Alban Berg's Lulu on CD. This is an EMI reissue from 1992, sadly reissued without the libretto (a sad trend in the opera CD business) but the price is right - three disks for the price of one. The sound is very good indeed for live and adds to the spontinaty of the ensemble (with the minimum of odd stage noises). Patricia Wise is tops as Lulu... flying high with great ease. Listening side-by-side to the Berg-Lulu/Teresa Stratas with Boulez conducting you can feel the enormous pressure on all involved to finish the first 3-act Lulu in 1979. That takes nothing away from Boulez, it's just the everything on the "Tate" with Orchestre National de France sounds easy, fluid, and natural, the music and the voices just float. Jeffrey Tate conducts the Orchestre National de France with great care. He brings a sweetness to Berg's score, the jazz elements appear like fire flies and are gone in an instant... you want to hear them again... very haunting indeed... The singer's make it sound so easy singing in the Singspiel style ("song-play" a form of German-language music drama). I call it song-speak, going back and forth from speaking voice to half song voice interwoven into the music... Berg's style makes this opera... it's very heady stuff. We have a cast of singers to die for, and some over the top casting... all veterans in Opera's Who's Who. Brigitte Fassbaender as Countess Geschwitz... Wolfgang Schone's Dr Schon/Jack the Ripper, Hans Hotter's Schigolch, with Graham Clark, Peter Straka... all are outstanding. Add this one among the other outstanding CD performance's of Berg's Lulu, Boulez/Teresa Stratas and Chandos's "Opera in English" series, Daniel/ENO with Lisa Saffer as Lulu."