"Taken by the Devil": The Censorship of Frank Wedekind and Alban Berg's Lulu

Censorship had an extraordinary impact on Alban Berg's opera Lulu, composed by the Austrian during the politically tumultuous years spanning 1929 to 1935. Based on plays by Frank Wedekind that were repeatedly banned from being published and performed from 1894 until the end of World War I, the libretto was in turn censored by Berg himself when he characterized it as a morality play after submitting it to authorities in Nazi Germany in 1934. After Berg died the next year, the third act was c...