“Burlesque Tragedy” and “tristan Rapture”

Abstract

This chapter addresses connections between the Lulu works of Wedekind and Berg and several understandings of “fin-de-siècle decadence.” The title quotes reviews of two works that owe their existence to censorship, Erdgeist and Symphonic Pieces from “Lulu,” both of which are arguably more perfect than the uncensored original works, Wedekind’s Ur-Lulu, suppressed in 1894, and Berg’s opera, rejected by authorities in 1934. After tracing the censorship of Wedekind’s Lulu plays, the chapter focuses on his transformation of Act 3 of the Ur-Lulu, manifestly a product of turn-of-the-century decadence in its ironic, over-the-top depiction of drug use and risqué sexual relationships, into passages in acts of the two later plays. It begins a discussion of Berg’s responses to those passages in the scenes of his opera’s Act 2, each of which recalls Tristan und Isolde in a different way, and touches on the broader significance of “fin-de-siècle decadence” in Berg’s time.