Director Leea Klemola’s Lulu is a hairy apewoman

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By Vesa Sirén
     
      Lulu, a violent opera composed by Austrian Alban Berg (1885-1935) and first performed in 1937, is to return to Helsinki after an absence of 40 years.
      The initiative was taken by soprano Anu Komsi and her conductor husband Sakari Oramo, who introduced the work into in their opera project in Kokkola.
      This Luluis not quite like any we seen before. In this version Lulu returns as a hairy apewoman with no morals, who lived in a zoo until she was 12, and has no sense of sexual guilt.
     
The idea was dreamed up by director Leea Klemola, a controversial figure whose services the Finnish National Opera would probably not dare to engage.
      According to the website of the West Coast Kokkola Opera, Klemola has been directing in a frenzied rage, which could be the reason why she is not willing to let journalists attend her rehearsals, even though she likes to talk about the topic.
     
Klemola has based her direction on the symbolic prologue of the opera, in which a circus ringmaster introduces the various animals in his menagerie. The last is Lulu herself, who is carried on stage and introduced as a snake, tamed by human reason.
      ”For technical reasons pertaining to stagecraft, we will stay in the zoo”, Klemola notes.
      Klemola says that she has always hated those productions of Lulu in which the main character is coquetting as an object of the male gaze, frequently wearing sado-masochistic outfits.
      ”The libretto of Lulu was written in a period when women had no money of their own and they had to get married in order to obtain their livelihood - in other words marriage could be compared to prostitution. It is difficult to imagine, as the status of women has changed so much”, Klemola argues.
     
The libretto of the savage Lulu was adapted by Berg himself from Frank Wedekind's plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box).
      The structure of Lulu is said to be like a mirror - Lulu’s popularity in the first act is mirrored by the squalor she lives in at the end, while all events are reflected in the music.
     
In Klemola’s view, the libretto shows Lulu as a calculating opportunist, as the society never gives her any other possibility.
      Klemola’s Lulu is ”an opportunist who does not calculate”. The apewoman expresses her will and her desires spontaneously.
      ”Even men become more sympathetic when they lust after an equal apewoman who is as strong as they are - not after a flirting physically weaker woman! Lulu does not expect candlelit suppers, she is a willing sex partner. No boys in the backseat have ever called her a whore, nor has she been shaped by any images of the Virgin Mary ”, Klemola continues enthusiastically.
     
Are the men of the libretto not disgusting? They all address Lulu by different names, projecting their own preconceptions and dreams onto her.
      ”It is not sympathetic but it is understandable”, says Klemola, starting another of her long monologues.
      ”But nobody can replace Finnish men! I love Finnish men who are noble enough to refrain from hitting women like us. I myself would hit such people as myself! The likes of women that Finnish men put up with, they would not be tolerated in France! I would never marry a Frenchman, I would rather shoot myself. Or maybe I would, but at least I would not create any art there”, Klemola declares.
     
And why is one of the male characters  an ape this time?
      ”Well, at the beginning, Lulu’s husband Dr. Goll dies of a heart attack, when he unexpectly walks in and finds Lulu having sex with another man. Now how can anyone die when seeing sex? But in our version, Goll is an circus athlete who is upset when he sees Lulu having sex with an ape from the same circus troupe. Then they argue about the incident in a caravan, and Lulu beats him up”, Klemola explains.
     
According to the original libretto, Lulu eventually ends up in London where she works as a prostitute and is stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper. Nothing like this happens in Klemola’s version.
      ”We do not have any Act III. Our Lulu will move to Tallinn”, Klemola reports.
      At this point, Anu Komsi - the Artistic Director of the Kokkola Opera, who is also taking the title-role - silences Klemola, saying that she must not reveal the dénouement.
     
The music of Lulu is to be played exactly as it initially was, conductor Sakari Oramo points out.
      ”We will not include the third act, as Alban Berg never completed it. We will present the music of the opera in the form it was until 1979, with parts of Berg's Lulu Suite played in place of Act III”, Oramo reports.
      A new completed version of the music was made by Friedrich Cerha. It was published in 1979.
      However, Oramo does not consider Cerha’s work to be as good as the the first two acts completed by Berg. Only the most genuine Lulu will be played, and Oramo says that all performance notes given by the composer are followed carefully, even by Klemola.
      ”For example, the rhythm of Lulu’s steps has been accurately written”, Oramo adds.
      Berg also made use of Arnold Schönberg’s dodecaphonic technique so that each character was given a tone row of their own, acting rather like the leitmotivs in Richard Wagner's operas.
      ”To me it was just noise, containing no pop music melodies. All the same, music describes the states of mind in a fine way”, Klemola notes.
     
Oramo does not wish to underestimate the understanding of the Helsinki audience.
      Lulu is a cult opera that has been eagerly awaited.
      Even the most expensive EUR 50 tickets have been sold all over the country.
      In the summer, the Kokkola Opera is to premiere Sebastian Fagerlund’s Döbeln 1809, whereafter the opera will be taken on tour. In addition, the Kokkola Opera is to perform a Swedish-language children’s opera Hästarna kommer (The Thunder of Horses).
     
     
Alban Berg: Lulu. The West Coast Kokkola Opera and the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra. Conductor: Sakari Oramo. Director: Leea Klemola.
      Performances at Helsinki’s Cable Factory, Merikaapelisali, at 9:00 p.m.: Saturday March 7th (Premiere), Tuesday March 10th, Thursday March 12th, Friday March 13th. Tickets: EUR 50/45/25
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 5.3.2009


Links:
  West Coast Kokkola Opera
  Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra
  Sakari Oramo (Wikipedia)
  Alban Berg: Lulu (Wikipedia)

VESA SIRÉN / Helsingin Sanomat
vesa.siren@hs.fi