and the full score to that very bar where the catastrophe struck Alban Berg himself, Lulu's last victim. “Now, however, that these legitimate concerns have been obviated by the great success of the premiere, I revert today to my wish, already known to you for a long time: namely, the publication, as soon as possible of the vocal score of Act III, the complete libretto. In addition to this response to the opera, she also had written to Berg's publisher shortly after the premiere: ( quoted in Perle, Operas of Alban Berg: Lulu, p. How could Alban, who had so much to say and to give, have been called away if his last work, which nothing else can touch, had not been left, in some possible way, 'complete.' Even those who today face this work without understanding or with misgivings – for he was so far in advance of them – will gradually grow into it, until a time comes when people will at last know who Alban Berg was.” That the opera is stageworthy as a torso doesn't surprise me I have learned to trust in that which is Higher, it has all happened according to a plan. It is a fearful thing and people don't like it, when one illuminates their depths but when Alwa sings of Lulu, in tender ecstasy, “A soul, rubbing the sleep from its eyes in the next world,” I know now that this dream also had to be written, for it has its own profound meaning. I love it and tremble for it, as for a child. Lulu is just as dear to me now as Wozzeck. It is also worth noting that I was always prejudiced against this Wedekind, but since I've heard the music for it, this music, it's different. The beginning and end of our earthly existence. Alban has grasped the depth of two things and has understood how to give it back again: the mystery of love and of death.

There are places in it where one feels that one is no longer on this earth. When I heard it sounding for the first time it seemed so deeply familiar to me, as though it came from me and was my own speech. Shortly after Lulu's world premiere in Zurich, Helene Berg wrote to her friend Alma Mahler (I suppose I should refer to her as Alma Werfel since at the time she was married to author Franz Werfel), This is a continuation of the previous post, ' Alban Berg's Lulu: Up Close but Not Too Personal.'

Lulu opera libretto