American Lulu: Komische Oper Berlin

About the Event

For this production at the Komische Oper Berlin, the award‐winning Austrian composer, Olga Neuwirth, takes a fresh look at one of theatre history’s most dazzling female characters, Alban Berg’s Lulu. The central figures in Neuwirth's treatment of this key work of 20th century opera are portrayed as African Americans, and their fate plays out against the backdrop of the US protest movements of the sixties and seventies.

The Russian theatre and film director Kirill Serebrennikov has, among other places, worked at Moscow’s Pushkin Theatre, at the Bolshoi and Mariinsky theatres, and is now active internationally. His film Playing the victim received the award for best film at the Rome Film Festival in 2006. American Lulu represents his first staging at a German‐language opera house.

In English, with German, English, French, and Turkish subtitles.

Crew

Johannes Kalitzke, conductor
Kirill Serebrennikov, staging/ stage and costume design
Johanna Wall and Sergej Newski, dramaturgy
Diego Leetz, light
Gonduras Jitomirsky, video

Cast

Lulu: Marisol Montalvo
Eleanor: Della Miles
Clarence: Jacques‐Greg Belobo
Dr. Bloom: Claudio Otelli
Jimmy/Young Man: Rolf Romei
Painter: Dmitry Golovnin
Athlete: N.N.
Professor/Banker: Hans‐Peter Scheidegger
Commissioner: Frank Baer
Lulu‐Double: Jane‐Lynn Steinbrunn