In the erotic, tormented mind of the late Playwright Frank Wedekind, a woman named Lulu was a symbol of insatiability. His two plays about her (Erdgeist and Büchse der Pandora) showed people helplessly racked by passion, preached: "Only children have reason; men are animals." Composer Alban Berg articulated the same opinion with his opera Wozzeck. When he based an opera on Wedekind's Lulu, Berg produced the most impressive monument of lust in all musical literature. When orchestral excerpts from it were played at the Berlin Staatsoper, extra police squads stood by to...
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