Lulu is an opera of such difficulty that it is hard to imagine any company being able to justify the expense of a studio recording. Pierre Boulez’s version seems to have the best of both worlds, being recorded under studio conditions at IRCAM while the first ever production of the complete three-act score was being performed by the same artists at the Paris Opera. This new recording suggests that little need be lost and even something gained by catching a series of performances on the wing. The production in question was clearly a great occasion: the first time the opera had been performed in any Scandinavian country, a historic building with excellent acoustics (a riding-school attached to the palace of Christiansborg in Copenhagen) being converted into a theatre for the occasion after three years of planning. It was evidently a huge success, and you can hear a sense of achievement in the assurance of this reading. With a lengthy rehearsal period the level of accuracy is pretty high. Far more important is a sense of singers reacting to each other, of these tangled relationships being real, urgent and painful. The pace of the reading and the sheer grip of the drama are also very impressive.
Having registered this with pleasure and relief one can sit back and enjoy the individual performances, and although this is above all a strong ensemble account several singers do stand out. Peter Straka as Alwa first and foremost: a tenor of amply warm tone and elegant expression in a role that has too often been sung by dry voices. Here there is no doubt that he is a poet (although named as a composer in the score; he is clearly also Berg’s self-portrait). It was a pleasure to hear Theo Adam genuinely singing Schigolch, thus presenting him as much more than a crotchety old man with a breathing problem: hardly an asthmatic wheeze is to be heard. Sten Byriel, too, presents the Animal Tamer as a more rounded figure than usual by singing those of his notes that are intended to be sung, and singing them well. I also liked Julia Juon’s Geschwitz, who has a warmer, more contralto-ish sound than usual: this Geschwitz is perhaps a decade or so older than Lulu and all the more touching for it.
I have no important reservations about any of the other ‘secondary’ roles; alas I have a few about the two other central ones. Monte Jaffe is a very parlando Dr Schon; he barks vehemently and overbearingly, and of course Schon is overbearing. But there must be some sense of power and dangerous suavity, of glamour, even, to explain Lulu’s attraction to him, and I do not hear it in the hectoring bully presented here. As Lulu herself, Constance Hauman is note-perfect (no mean achievement in this role), but under pressure her voice is shrill, almost nagging, with an edgy, fast vibrato. Projecting to a fair-sized auditorium across a large orchestra she is under pressure for much of the time. Her rare quiet singing makes one wish, vainly, that she could have been recorded in the studio, since she clearly has a fine understanding of the part.
The disadvantage of an otherwise very atmospheric recording is that the voices are at times recessed. The orchestra, however, play finely for Ulf Schirmer and either he or the engineers (both, probably) have taken great care over internal balance. Not the most thoroughly satisfying Lulu around (Boulez’s reading, despite occasional chilliness, must be my first choice), nor the most seductive account of the title-role (a tie, here, between Boulez’s Teresa Stratas and Christine Schafer in Andrew Davis’s Glyndebourne account – available on video only, NVC, 3/97). But among sound-only recordings its combination of precision and sheer stage electricity makes for absorbing listening.'