Stars: Christine Schafer, Kathryn Harries, Patricia Bardon, Jonathan Veira, Wolfgang Schone, David Kuebler, Norman Bailey, Donald Maxwell, Neil Jenkins, London Philharmonic Orchestra

Director: Graham Vick

Summary: A seductress falls from grace and is murdered by Jack The Ripper. Directed for video by Humphrey Burton. The London Philharmonic is conducted by Andrew Davis.

The Glyndebourne Festival Opera presented this Alban Berg opera in 1997 to great acclaim and went on to win the Gramophone Award for best video of the year. Andrew Davis wields the baton, conducting the London Philharmonic for one of the great opera masterpieces of the Twentieth Century.

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Alban Berg's second and last opera Luluis one of the monuments of modernism, constructed around serial technique and containing scenes conceived of as Sonata-form, Suite and so on. The bliss of Andrew Davis's conducting in this classic Glyndebourne production is that we forget all of this--Davis doesn't gloss over the music's intellectual content, but that's not what we think about as we watch and listen. Part of the production's strength is the prodigious performance by Christine Schafer as Lulu--for once we believe in the character's sexual energy and power; and Schafer makes her real enough as a person that we largely forget the work's intrinsic misogyny. The rest of the cast are admirable too: Norman Bailey brings something perversely sweet to the disreputable painter Schigolch; Kathryn Harries makes the dying words of Lulu's lesbian lover Geschwitz one of the work's lyric high points; David Kuebler is equally powerful as Alwa. The final duet between Lulu and her destroyer Jack the Ripper is one of Wolfgang Schone's great moments, but he is equally good as Dr Schon, the man Lulu marries and kills. This is a performance of energy and beauty, matched by a simple but effective production.

On the DVDLuluon disc is presented in disappointingly in NTSC format with a 4:3 picture ratio. Fortunately, the Dolby 2.0 digital sound is ideal for the fine detail of this complex score and these nuanced performances. There are subtitles in English, French, German, Spanish and Japanese. --Roz Kaveney

Aspect Ratio:	4:3
Main Language:	German
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Chapter Selection
Subtitles:	English, French, German, Japanese, Spanish
Year:	1996
Release Date:	February 23, 2004
Runtime:	182 minutes
Certification:	Exempt.
Catalogue Number:	0630 15533 2
Label:	N V C Arts
Keywords:	Music, Subtitled, Opera, Festival, Lulu, Glyndebourne, Works, Performance, Plays, Stage, Alban, Classical, Performing, Operetta, Arts, Berg's
Genre:	Music/Performing Arts