William Kentridge’s new production of Alban Berg’s atonal opera “Lulu” is sordid, seductive, sadistic, scandalous and, as one of the characters quips in German, full of schmutz. It might be the best new production the Met has seen since Kentridge’s daring 2010 take on Shostakovich’s “The Nose.” “Lulu,” based on “Spring Awakening” author Franz Wedekind’s…
“That was simply amazing!” a normally jaded music executive exclaimed to me after the second act of Franz Schreker’s provocative “Der Ferne Klang” (“The Distant Sound”). Hounded to death as a “degenerate” composer by the rising Nazis, Schreker’s defiantly louche, wildly successful 1909 opera disappeared and had to wait a century for its first American…
Franz Schreker, an Austrian composer of Jewish descent who was hounded to an untimely death by the Nazis, has long been considered an unjustly forgotten genius. In recent years, however, Schreker’s works have received some long-overdue attention. In 2005 American music director Kent Nagano conducted a darkly impressive revival of Schreker’s 1918 opera “The Marked…
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