Lulu and the Cinderella from Idaho

By William Bender

During rehearsals there had been more excitement than usual among the stagehands at the Metropolitan Opera. Alban Berg's classic 20th century opera Lulu was being mounted for the first time in the company's history, but that was not it: to stagehands one opera is as memorable as another. What held their eyes was a makeshift dressing room right behind the sets. No wonder. The star of the show would regularly dash into it for a series of quick costume changes, some of her garments being scantier than others. As the opening-night audience soon learned, Soprano Carole Farley looks good in anything, but especially scanties. Pretty and bosomy, yet as long-legged and graceful as a model, Farley also has a warm, sensuous voice. She handles Berg's music, some of the most difficult of our time, as though it were by Puccini.

It was, in short, a splendid debut. Farley's success had its Cinderella overtones as well. Reared in Moscow, Idaho, and the runner-up in the 1964 America Junior Miss Pageant, Farley, 30, has worked primarily in Europe for the past eight years. Though she already had 49 performances of Lulu to her credit, she was engaged as the cover (understudy) for Soprano Teresa Stratas. As reward, Farley had been given one of the seven performances to sing herself. A month and a half ago, Stratas withdrew from the production, complaining about lack of rehearsal time. Farley got the call on the day of a birthday party she was throwing for her year-old daughter Lara (Conductor Jose Serebrier is her husband). Says Farley: "I couldn't have asked for a better Met debut or a better opera production."

Special Problem. Conductor James Levine and Stage Director John Dexter, the duo currently guiding the Met's artistic fortunes, have come up with a brilliant Lulu. Levine unravels Berg's intricate, absorbing twelve-tone score in an almost chamberistic way, keeping all voices and orchestral strands balanced and clearly audible, yet summoning up a kind of debauched expressionism when that is called for.

Dexter's task was equally difficult. Lulu is a walking, talking bundle of erotic radioactivity. Known in other places as Woman, Femme Fatale, the Temptress, she is a rough operatic equivalent of Don Giovanni. She consumes the men--and one lesbian--who love her, then is consumed by them and destroyed. She ends up as a streetwalker, and the final slash of the knife is delivered by none other than Jack the Ripper. Some stage directors choose to play up the trampy side of Lulu. Dexter has made her an innocent, totally unaware of the evil effect she has on those around her. In the process Dexter has robbed Lulu (and Farley) of the intensity she needs. Up against Donald Gramm's fierce twin portrayals of Dr. Schoen (one of Lulu's lovers) and Jack the Ripper, a touch of evil would not hurt.

Any production of Lulu has a special problem. Berg had not finished the orchestration of the third and last act when he died in 1935. In the years thereafter and in her will (she died last August), Berg's widow steadfastly refused to allow publication of his sketches for the act. Yet one who has seen them, American Composer George Perle, says that they are complete enough to make orchestration a relatively easy matter.

The Met performed a shortened third act, as many companies have done, using orchestral music from Berg's own Lulu Suite. Conductor Levine, for one, is sufficiently impressed with the opera as it is, but believes completion of the third act will prove Lulu to be the 20th century's finest. At the very least, what Berg wrote should have a chance to speak for itself.

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