In 1979, the Paris Opera’s staging of the complete Lulu was hailed as an all-round artistic triumph – winning a Gramophone Award in 1979 – and, 20 years on, there’s no doubt that the recording wears its age well. This is as much to do with the vocal as the orchestral contribution. Teresa Stratas, soon to retire from the stage, breathes a meta-reality into the title role; she is not only seductress and heroine, but also a mirror reflecting each of the other protagonists. Less commanding than Anna Silja (Decca, 12/78 – nla) and less sympathetic than Constance Haumann (Chandos, 9/97), she nevertheless gives a more emotionally complete portrayal than either. Her ‘Lied’ (disc 2, track 5) remains a marvel of sensitive coloratura, only Patricia Wise, on Jeffrey Tate’s disappointingly flaccid recording (EMI, 1/93), being technically superior.
Franz Mazura is a properly hollow Schon, whose seeming authority gives way to a blackly humorous vulnerability prior to his death. Kenneth Riegel shines in a different mode of helplessness as Alwa, the sensitive composer drawn ineluctably to his own destruction, his ‘Hymne’ to Lulu (disc 2, track 10) saturated in a lacerating irony. Robert Tear is mellifluous as the fatally naive Painter, Toni Blankenheim chilling as the asthmatic svengali Schigolch, while Yvonne Minton brings a humanity to Countess Geschwitz which underlines Berg’s treatment of the role as more than the comic-strip lesbian of Wedekind’s original.
Boulez directs with unobtrusive mastery, the clear, neutral sound not at all inappropriate. If passages such as the Act 1 interlude (disc 1, track 9) lack the emotional surge of Bohm (DG, 1/93) or Dohnanyi (Decca, 12/78 – nla), the seemingly intractable form of Act 3’s first scene is tellingly held together, while the climactic confrontation between Lulu and Jack, pulling the conceptual plug on the German love scene, demonstrates just why Friedrich Cerha’s realisation had to happen. Until Christine Schafer records the opera, perhaps with Oliver Knussen conducting the Cleveland Orchestra, this remains the version of Lulu to have.'