Alban Berg only wrote two operas, but they turned the genre upside down, leaving a searing, unignorable legacy to his 20th-century successors. Wozzeck is the tragedy of a simple soldier broken and brutalized by an all-too-believable world. Lulu was left unfinished at Berg’s death in 1935, but its story of a woman living—and dying—through her own sensuality continues to grip and provoke. The German conductor Karl Böhm knew Berg, and these historic stereo recordings have a force and an authenticity that feels like he has a hotline to the composer’s subconscious. The singers, too, are exceptional, with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau at the peak of his career and soprano Evelyn Lear as Lulu, a role that she created just eight years before this incomplete (but still shattering) recording.
Disc 1
Disc 2
Disc 3
- Anja Silja, Eberhard Wächter, Hermann Winkler, Wiener Staatsopernchor, Vienna Philharmonic & Christoph von Dohnányi
- Berlin Philharmonic, Claudio Abbado & David Shallon
- Wilhelm Furtwängler & Philharmonia Orchestra
- Astrid Varnay, Bernd Aldenhoff, Rita Streich, Hans Hotter, Bayreuth Festival Orchestra & Joseph Keilberth
- Christa Ludwig, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Gottlob Frick, Hans Hotter, Chor der Wiener Staatsoper, René Kollo, Sir Georg Solti, Vienna Philharmonic, Wiener Sängerknaben & Zoltan Kelemen
- Otto Klemperer & Philharmonia Orchestra
- Carlos Kleiber, Catarina Ligendza, Helge Brilioth, Kurt Moll & Yvonne Minton