Pandora's Box: A Tragedy in Three Acts

About

Wedekind's Pandora's Box (1904) is the sequel to Earth Spirit and the concluding part of the Lulu cycle: following the amoral and irresistible Lulu from Berlin to Paris to London, where she meets her end at the hands of Jack the Ripper. Alban Berg's opera Lulu, based on both Lulu plays, is one of the canonical works of twentieth-century music. Pandora's Box is more disturbing and more explicitly sexual than its predecessor, banned in Germany for years; taken together the two Lulu plays constitute Wedekind's most fully realized work and one of the founding documents of Expressionist drama. The character of Lulu — utterly amoral, absolutely vital — is one of the great creations of the modern stage.