Pandora’s Box

(Pabst, 1928) Music compiled by Gillian Anderson.

Based on the play by Wedekind, a film starring the cult star Louise Brooks. Lulu, whose rich publisher lover is engaged to the daughter of the Internal Minister, forces her lover to marry her by putting him in an embarassing position in the theater in front of his fiancee. On the evening of their wedding, his son declares his love for Lulu, his father’s new wife. His father, seeing her in a compromising position with his son after seeing her in his bedroom in a compromising position with her drunken father, asks her to kill herself. Instead she kills him by mistake. She is brought to trial and found guilty of murder. Her father arranges for her escape from the courtroom. Reconnecting with her dead husband’s son, they escape to a gambling ship. She is being blackmailed by an unscrupulous Italian aristocrat who threatens to sell her as a sex slave to a Turk with a harem. After another murder, her father helps her and her lover escape to London where she becomes a prostitute and is killed by Jack the Ripper.

Performing forces
Minimum
11 players (violin I & II, cello, bass, flute/pic, clarinet I, trumpet I, trombone, percussion/tympani, piano, synthesizer)
Performing forces
Maximum
44 players (strings: 7,7,6,5,4; flute/pic, oboe, clarinet I & II, bassoon, 2 trumpets, 2 Fr. horns, trombone, harp, piano, 2 percussion, tympani.)
Rehearsals Two 2 ½ hour rehearsals with orchestra
One 3 hour 10 minute technical rehearsal with film
One 3 hour 10 minute dress rehearsal with orchestra and film plus 15 minute intermission.
Performance time 2 hour 11 minutes plus 15 minute intermission
Film speed 20 frames per second
Film source Killiam Films (US) or British Film Institute (Europe)
DVD source
Kino International
credits:
artwork:Lidia Bagnoli