No one seems to have had a go at my little quiz question below. I was quoting from Karl Kraus' 1905 lecture about the plays of Frank Wedekind: “The great retaliation has begun, the revenge of a man’s world which has the audacity to punish its own guilt.” Alban Berg was in the audience for Kraus' lecture and for the ensuing performance of Pandora's Box, in which the playwright himself played Jack the Ripper. The seed of Lulu, possibly the greatest and certainly the darkest opera of the twentieth century, was planted. There was a heart-tugging romantic side to the evening: Wedekind ended up marrying the actress Tilly Newes, whose character he had slaughtered onstage.
Above is the seating chart for the 1905 performance, with Berg's place circled. (Courtesy of George Perle's Lulu book.) He was next to his brother Hermann, who, I recently discovered in a great Google moment, co-invented the Teddy Bear. In 1903 Hermann bought 3000 unsold Steiff bears in Leipzig and put them on sale at Wanamaker's in New York, where they became a sensation. At one point Alban was going to go to America to join his brother's firm. It's difficult to imagine what might have ensued. Perhaps Gershwin would have had a rival.
Karl Kraus was of course the inventor of blogging.
