Pandora's Box (Drama)
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| Title: | Pandora's Box |
| Genus: | Tragedy in three acts |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Frank Wedekind |
| Publishing year: | 1902 |
| Place and time of the action: | The first act takes place in a major German city, the second in Paris, the third in London |
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Pandora's Box is a tragedy in three acts by Frank Wedekind . It is the continuation of Wedekind's tragedy Erdgeist . Both pieces were later used by Wedekind as a stage version in one piece called Lulu. Tragedy in 5 Acts with a prologue. summarized.
Emergence
Wedekind's first handwritten drafts of the later Lulu tragedy date from July 1892. In 1894, Wedekind completed the so-called original version, the "book drama" Pandora's Box. A monster tragedy , which was originally designed as a five-act classic tragedy. The 4th act of this original version took place in a noble brothel, the 5th act in a shabby London attic. In 1895 Wedekind had the first three comparatively harmless acts printed in order to counter possible resistance from censorship , followed by a further act, which was later added as a new 3rd act. The added 3rd act served dramaturgically for better and deeper understanding of the 4th act (originally 3rd act), similar to later the 1st act in Pandora's Box .
Pandora's box first appeared in book form in 1902. Due to the clarity and brutality of the language, which was unusual for the turn of the century, Wedekind wrote large passages of the text in English and French .
In 1913 Wedekind obtained a one-part version in five acts as a stage version with the title Lulu. Tragedy in 5 Acts with a prologue. Wedekind took into account objections of the censorship in this summary. Wedekind's 1913 version summarized older adaptations of Erdgeist as well as numerous adaptations of Pandora's Box . Both of Wedekind's pieces were later combined for the stage in an arrangement by Kadidja Wedekind , Wedekind's daughter, and premiered in Hamburg in 1950 . In the 1913 edition of the Gesammelte Werke , however, the two pieces were published in separate versions.
content
The title Pandora's box is an allusion to the vessel from Greek mythology , to the legendary Pandora's box . At the same time, the title has an erotic subtext , and this in two ways. The box that Pandora himself supposedly opened out of curiosity, and from which the evil of the world emerges, can be interpreted as her womb , as the place of first child and mother love. The obscene overtones of the title also refer to the vagina , the “center of desire and sexual pleasure”, that is, to the part of the woman's body, which the figure Schigolch describes in Act 2 as “Lulu's honey potty” and which in the end is the subject of bestial desecration Lulus is by the woman killer Jack the Ripper . Positive connotations of the box as a jar or vessel that Zeus gave to people so that they have what they need for life cannot be completely ruled out either.
The two pieces Erdgeist and The Pandora's Box depict the social life of the title role Lulu , a “female instinct”. Frank Wedekind himself characterized Lulu as follows: “In my Lulu I tried to draw a splendid specimen of woman, how it arises when a creature richly gifted by nature, even if it comes from the yeast, in an environment of men to whom it is sought Mutterwitz is far superior, has reached unlimited development. ”While Erdgeist described the social rise of Lulu, The Pandora's box traces the social decline of the title role and thus describes“ a life curve of extreme steepness in both directions ”.
- People: Lulu - Schigolch - Alwa Schön, writer - Rodrigo Quast, a circus athlete - Countess Geschwitz - Alfred Hugenberg, a high school student - Marquis Casti-Piani - Kungu Poti, Prince - Dr. Hilti, Privatdozent - Jack the Ripper . Various minor characters.
- Place and time: Magnificent hall; Paris : salon in white stucco; London : Attic. At the end of the 19th century.
The action begins with a prologue as in Erdgeist . In a bookstore, the publisher , the author , the reader and the public prosecutor talk about the latest work by the author, which the public prosecutor wants to have banned.
The drama begins with the end of Earth Spirit . Lulu is freed from prison by the lesbian Countess Geschwitz, who is in love with her. The high school student Hugenberg had also worked out a release plan out of love for Lulu, but he is too late. Lulu flees with her companion, the aging crook Schigolch, who may be her father, Dr. Schön's son Alwa and the athlete Rodrigo to Paris. There Lulu marries Alwa Schön, who is now wealthy due to his inheritance, and leads a luxury life. She allows herself to be wooed by other men, such as the Marquis Casti-Piani. In Paris, however, she is exposed to various blackmail attempts by her former lovers, including Rodrigo. Lulu instigates Schigolch to murder Rodrigo and ultimately has to flee Paris from the police. Lulu's last stop is London, where she pursues the trade of prostitution and as a whore earns a living for her companions Alwa, Schigolch and the slavishly loving Countess Geschwitz. Alwa is killed by a customer Lulu. Lulu and the Countess Geschwitz end up as victims of the woman murderer Jack the Ripper.
interpretation
The drama is a psychological interpretation of human relationships. Wedekind's open portrayal of human instinctuality was aimed at removing the taboo on sexuality and at opening up the solidified moral concepts of the Wilhelmine era and its social conventions, which completely denied human nature in this regard. Pandora's box is thus at the same time a polemic against the playwrights of naturalism , especially against Gerhart Hauptmann . Wedekind's figures have lost none of their sharpness and conciseness to this day, especially because of their stage effectiveness.
At Lulu, "as the archetype of uninhibited nature", all civil and social conventions break. Lulu is actually a very pitiful creature who has been wronged since she was a young boy. As in a Greek tragedy, the plot escalates, which one can not deny a certain longing for death for a better life. Wedekind shows compassion for this deeply unhappy person, who is used by all male protagonists to project their own dreams and desires. The literary scholar Silvia Bovenschen sums it up as follows: “In Lulu, men only perceive the mirror images of their own ideas of femininity. The catastrophes set in when the image they made of Lulu no longer corresponds to the actions and appearance of this figure ... “Only Dr. All her love is beautiful, but it breaks as well as with his son. She realizes that both of them love her only for selfish motives and ends again in an unfulfilled existence. From a modern point of view, this time is almost unbearable with its social dependency traps. Countess Countess, her lesbian worshiper, according Wedekind the actual tragic main character, says it most clearly the moral message of the piece: they want Jura study, in order to help women assert their rights.
The composer Alban Berg particularly enjoyed writing operas about the victims of serious legal offenses, and with the Lulu material he is sure to have found the appropriate continuation for his Wozzeck . In Georg Büchner's drama Woyzeck , which inspired him to write his first opera Wozzeck , Berg was particularly impressed by the exemplary catastrophe of the murder case , namely “not only the fate of this poor person who was exploited and tortured by all over the world, ... but also the unheard-of mood of the individual scenes. ”In his opera Lulu , Berg goes far beyond the ironic social and art criticism of Wedekind's dramas to an“ erotic mystery that is constantly made up of cycles. ”The unconsciously captured time color is fascinating, but it still does today similar phrases used in modern society.
The Pandora's box is, in keeping with the time of its creation, a further development of Arthur Schnitzler's dramas and permeated by the psychoanalytic insights of Sigmund Freud .
Performances
First performance, censorship process and ban
The premiere took place on February 1, 1904 in front of an invited audience in the Intimate Theater in Nuremberg . The production was done by the director and former director of the German Theater in Munich , Emil Meßthaler , who had been director of the Intimate Theater in Nuremberg since 1900. Wedekind, who, after a long period of hesitation and a certain period of reflection, agreed to a staged premiere, revised the text again for the stage. Despite the comparatively liberal censorship in Nuremberg at the time, the premiere was a theatrical scandal . A second performance planned for the following day was prevented by the police. On March 29, 1904, a one-time, closed performance took place in the Munich Schauspielhaus, which was largely negative in the press. On July 23, 1904, the Munich public prosecutor's office brought charges against Wedekind and his publisher Bruno Cassirer for distributing indecent writings. The subsequent censorship process, which was fought in three instances until 1906, ended with Wedekind's acquittal and the ban on the work. Wedekind referred to this in 1907 in his one-act play "Die Zensur" and in his prologue in the bookstore , which was written for the "adjusted" version of Pandora's box and which formally parodied Goethe's prelude to the theater .
Further performances
Pandora's box was performed in a closed performance in May 1905 in the Trianon Theater in Vienna. Tilly Newes , the future wife of Wedekind, took on the title role, Adele Sandrock the Countess Geschwitz . Other performances of Pandora's Box took place in 1911 at the Modern Theater in Berlin (production: Albert Steinrück ) and in 1919 at the Hamburger Kammerspiele . Productions from 1913 onwards generally used the Lulu version in one piece as the textual basis . Further productions followed in 1926 by Erich Engel at the Schillertheater Berlin with Gerda Müller and Fritz Kortner and in 1928 by Otto Falckenberg at the Munich Schauspielhaus . Both directors used their own adaptations and summaries of both pieces. Both of Wedekind's pieces formed the material basis for Alban Berg 's opera Lulu, which was premiered in 1937 as a fragment .
In West Berlin , Gisela Uhlen took on the title role at the Schiller Theater in 1952 in a production by Oscar Fritz Schuh . Gustav Manker staged the play at the Vienna Volkstheater in 1960 within a Wedekind cycle with Elfriede Irrall in the title role and Egon von Jordan (Schön) and Ernst Meister (Alwa).
In February 1972 staged Patrice Chereau , with Valentina Cortese at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan , the Lulu the edited by kadidja wedekind version. 1977 staged by Hans Neuenfels , the Lulu at the Schauspielhaus Zurich in Corso theater with Elisabeth Trissenaar in the title role; in the same year Dieter Dorn at the Münchner Kammerspiele with Cornelia Froboess . In 1979 the opera Lulu was premiered in Paris in the version supplemented by Friedrich Cerha and the instrumentation of the third act with Teresa Stratas in the title role and Pierre Boulez at the conductor's desk.
1981 followed a production by Nicolas Brieger at the Berlin Schiller Theater with Angelica Domröse . In November 1981, staged Roberto Ciulli the Lulu in the Theater an der Ruhr . The staging of the five-act Lulu in 1988 at the Schauspielhaus Hamburg under the direction of Peter Zadek with Susanne Lothar ( Lulu ), Ulrich Wildgruber ( Dr. Schön ), Ulrich Tukur ( ) is regarded as an outstanding performance, which brought the complete original version of the play on stage for the first time. Alwa ), Jutta Hoffmann ( Geschwitz ), Paulus Manker ( Casti Piani ) and Uwe Bohm ( Jack the Ripper ) in the leading roles. The staging with the stage design by Johannes Grützke moved the plot to the time after the Second World War . The clarity of Wedekind's dialogues was reflected in the excessive body language of the stage actors, right up to the complete nudity of the title role.
In February 2004, Michael Thalheimer's production premiered at the Hamburg Thalia Theater with Fritzi Haberlandt as Lulu .
From April 2011 to June 2013 the piece Lulu was played at the Berliner Ensemble . The play with Angela Winkler in the leading role was staged by the American director and set designer Robert Wilson ; Lou Reed wrote the music .
Movie
The Lulu fabric has already been filmed several times. 1917 under the title Lulu in Hungary with Erna Morena , in 1921 and 1923 each with Asta Nielsen , 1921 under the title Die Büchse der Pandora and in 1923 under the direction of Leopold Jeßner under the title Erdgeist . In 1929 the film Pandora's Box with Louise Brooks was made and directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst . In 1962 Rolf Thiele filmed the material under the title Lulu with Nadja Tiller , O. E. Hasse and Hildegard Knef in the leading roles. 1980 played Anne Bennent the title role in the film Lulu by Walerian Borowczyk . Jessica Schwarz starred in Lulu from 2006 .
literature
- Silvia Bovenschen : Staging the staged femininity: Wedekind's 'Lulu' - paradigmatic. In: dies .: The imagined femininity. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, pp. 43-59, ISBN 3-518-12431-5 .
- Ortrud Gutjahr (Ed.): Lulu by Frank Wedekind. Gender scenes in Michael Thalheimer's production at the Thalia Theater Hamburg . Würzburg 2006, ISBN 978-3-8260-3287-5 .
- Ingo Müller: Lulu. Literature processing and opera dramaturgy: A comparative analysis of Frank Wedekind's Lulu dramas and Alban Berg's opera Lulu in the light of reflections on genre theory (= Rombach Sciences: Litterae Series, Vol. 177). Freiburg i. Br. 2010, ISBN 978-3-7930-9624-5 .
- Siegfried Kienzle, Otto CA zur Nedden , Karl H. Ruppel (eds.): Reclams actor . 17th edition, Stuttgart 1986, ISBN 3-15-007817-2 , pp. 646-649.
- Anatol Regnier: Frank Wedekind. A tragedy for men . Munich 2008. ISBN 978-3-8135-0255-8
- Volker Scherliess : Alban Berg . Reinbek bei Hamburg 1975. 7th edition 1994, ISBN 3-499-50225-9 .
- Bengt Algot Sørensen: History of German Literature 2 . Munich 1997. 2nd, updated edition 2002, pp. 151–155, ISBN 978-3-406-42017-7 .
- Jochanan Ch. Trilse-Finkenstein, Klaus Hammer: Lexikon Theater International . Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-89487-180-6 , pp. 978-979.
- Erhard Weidl: in: Frank Wedekind: Lulu . Epilogue, pp. 183-206. Stuttgart 1989, ISBN 3-15-008567-5 .
- Wolfgang Willaschek: 50 classic operas . Hildesheim 2000, ISBN 3-8067-2510-1 , pp. 34-39, 100-105.
Web links
- Frank Wedekind: Pandora's box - content and criticism at dieterwunderlich.de
- Frank Wedekind: Pandora's box - preface to the 3rd edition by Frank Wedekind and full text at symbolon.de
- Frank Wedekind: Pandora's box in the Gutenberg-DE project
Individual evidence
- ↑ Frank Wedekind: Pandora's box. Cassirer, Berlin 1902. ( digitized and full text in the German text archive )
- ↑ a b c d Anatol Regnier: Frank Wedekind. A tragedy for men , pp. 142; 143
- ^ Lulu by Frank Wedekind. Gender scenes in Michael Thalheimer's production at the Thalia Theater Hamburg p. 31, available online at Google Books
- ↑ a b c Siegfried Kienzle, Otto CA zur Nedden, Karl H. Ruppel (ed.): Reclams actor . 17th edition, Stuttgart 1986, pp. 646-649.
- ↑ a b Jochanan Ch. Trilse-Finkenstein, Klaus Hammer: Lexikon Theater International , pp. 978–979
- ^ Silvia Bovenschen : Staging of Staged Femininity: Wedekind's 'Lulu' - paradigmatic. In: dies .: The imagined femininity. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1979, pp. 43-59; Excerpts under the title Female also staged in: Program booklet Lulu , Oper Nürnberg , season 1996/97, pp. 14-16
- ↑ Volker Scherliess: Alban Berg . Reinbek bei Hamburg 1975. Quoted from 7th edition, July 1994, pp. 109–118
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Willaschek: 50 classic operas . Hildesheim 2000, pp. 100-101.
- ^ Letter from Alban Berg to Anton Webern dated August 19, 1918. Quoted from: Volker Scherliess: Alban Berg . Reinbek bei Hamburg 1975. 7th edition, July 1994, pp. 63-76
- ↑ Paul Huhnerfeld: The "immoral" Frank Wedekind . In: Die Zeit , No. 33/1954