Lulu
Royal Opera House
It’s not often that I have felt so disinclined to write a piece about the past week’s opera-going, especially when it was an occasion I had looked forward to so much: Berg’s second opera Lulu, one of the strangest works in the repertoire, but even if not a masterpiece — it’s very hard to say what it is — a work of enduring fascination.
However, if you had the misfortune to encounter it for the first time in the Royal Opera’s new production by Christof Loy you would be entitled to wonder whether it was a work of any fascination at all, and not just a long-winded and perhaps unsavoury bore. At least the Royal Opera’s production of Wozzeck, fearful as it is, stimulates rage: this one merely leaves you glazed and immobilised.
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