Works
Wedekind's first major play, Frühlings Erwachen (Spring Awakening, 1891), which concerns sexuality and puberty among some young German students, caused a scandal, as it contained scenes of homoeroticism, implied group male masturbation, actual male masturbation, sado-masochism between a teenage boy and girl, rape, and suicide, as well as references to abortion. In 2006, it was adapted into a successful Broadway musical, Spring Awakening.
The "Lulu" plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904) are probably his best known works. Originally conceived as a single play, the two pieces tell a continuous story of a sexually-enticing young dancer who rises in German society through her relationships with wealthy men, but who later falls into poverty and prostitution. The frank depiction of sexuality and violence in these plays, including lesbianism and an encounter with Jack the Ripper (a role which Wedekind played himself in the original production), pushed the boundaries of what was considered acceptable on the stage at the time. Karl Kraus helped Wedekind to also stage in Vienna.
The "Lulu" plays formed the basis for G W Pabst's acclaimed silent film Pandora's Box (1929), starring Louise Brooks as Lulu, and Alban Berg's incomplete opera Lulu (1937), which is considered to be one of the masterpieces of twentieth-century opera. (Berg's opera Lulu was ultimately completed by composer Friedrich Cerha, based on Berg's nearly completed manuscripts released long after the composer's 1935 death. A full three act version was first performed in Paris in 1979 under the musical direction of Pierre Boulez). Currently the plays are being adapted into comics by John Linton Roberson. They also form the basis for the 2011 album Lulu, a collaboration between the rock musician Lou Reed and the heavy metal band Metallica.
Der Kammersänger (The Court-Singer, 1899) is a one-act character study of a famous opera singer who receives a series of unwelcome guests at his hotel suite. An opera in English, under the title "The Tenor" was written by composer Hugo Weisgall. In Franziska (1910), the title character, a young girl, initiates a Faustian pact with the Devil, selling her soul for the knowledge of what it is like to live life as a man (reasoning that men seem to have all the advantages). Wedekind's symbolist novella Mine-Haha, or On the Bodily Education of Young Girls (1903) was the basis for the film Innocence (2004) by Lucile Hadžihalilović and The Fine Art of Love (2005) by John Irvin.
A number of Wedekind's works were translated into English by Samuel Atkins Eliot, Jr.
Read more about this topic: Frank Wedekind
Famous quotes containing the word works:
“Every man is in a state of conflict, owing to his attempt to reconcile himself and his relationship with life to his conception of harmony. This conflict makes his soul a battlefield, where the forces that wish this reconciliation fight those that do not and reject the alternative solutions they offer. Works of art are attempts to fight out this conflict in the imaginative world.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)
“I shall not bring an automobile with me. These inventions infest France almost as much as Bloomer cycling costumes, but they make a horrid racket, and are particularly objectionable. So are the Bloomers. Nothing more abominable has ever been invented. Perhaps the automobile tricycles may succeed better, but I abjure all these works of the devil.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“We all agree now—by “we” I mean intelligent people under sixty—that a work of art is like a rose. A rose is not beautiful because it is like something else. Neither is a work of art. Roses and works of art are beautiful in themselves. Unluckily, the matter does not end there: a rose is the visible result of an infinitude of complicated goings on in the bosom of the earth and in the air above, and similarly a work of art is the product of strange activities in the human mind.”
—Clive Bell (1881–1962)