Structure
The large-scale structure of Lulu is often said to be like a mirror – Lulu's popularity in the first act is mirrored by the squalor she lives in during act 3, and this is emphasised by Lulu's husbands in act 1 being played by the same singers as her clients in act 3.
This mirror-like structure is further emphasised by the film interlude at act 2 at the very centre of the work. The events shown in the film are a miniature version of the mirror structure of the opera as a whole (Lulu enters prison and then leaves again) and the music accompanying the film is an exact palindrome – it reads the same forwards as backwards. The centre-point of this palindrome is indicated by an arpeggio played on the piano, first rising, then falling (shown here on the top staff).
Read more about this topic: Lulu (opera)
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Women over fifty already form one of the largest groups in the population structure of the western world. As long as they like themselves, they will not be an oppressed minority. In order to like themselves they must reject trivialization by others of who and what they are. A grown woman should not have to masquerade as a girl in order to remain in the land of the living.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“There is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed. There is therefore no such thing to be learned, mastered, or born with. We must give up the idea of a clearly defined shared structure which language-users acquire and then apply to cases.”
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“Why does philosophy use concepts and why does faith use symbols if both try to express the same ultimate? The answer, of course, is that the relation to the ultimate is not the same in each case. The philosophical relation is in principle a detached description of the basic structure in which the ultimate manifests itself. The relation of faith is in principle an involved expression of concern about the meaning of the ultimate for the faithful.”
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