Kentridge directs Alban Berg's Lulu at Teatro Costanzi in Rome

South African artist William Kentridge (Johannesburg, 1955) has staged Alban Berg's controversial opera Lulu at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, in a co-production with the Metropolitan Opera of New York, the English National Opera of London, and the De Nationale Opera of Amsterdam. The production runs until May 30. Kentridge, known for his epic and monumental historical narratives, here delves into psychological investigation. He uses sliding panels and video projections, with his signature evolving drawings now traversed by ink strokes that evoke sharp blades. A two-minute film interlude between the second act's first and second parts pays homage to German Expressionist cinema and summarizes Lulu's murder, trial, imprisonment, and illness. Two silent characters act as Brechtian masks, external to the narrative. The opera, begun by Berg in 1925 and left incomplete ten years later, is a bourgeois drama of masks, contrasting clichés with a vein of suffering. Kentridge models the character Alwa after a photo of Berg, and actors play double roles in identical costumes. The production critiques economic speculation in one of its choral scenes. Kentridge's layering technique, as in his animations, reflects the opera's descent into human passions.