Kurt Weill
N e w s l e t t e r

Mahagonnyrevisited

Volume 25
Number 1
Spring 2007

Ku r t We i l l

In this issue

N e w s l e t t e r
Note from the Editor

Volume 25
Number 1
Spring 2007

3

FeatureISSN 0899-6407

Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in
Copenhagen, 1933/34: An Early Debate
about Performing Style
Michael Fjeldsøe

4Sidebar: Aufstieg und Fall in Berlin, 1931/32

9

Search for Sheet Music and Band Arrangements

10

Music
Der Protagonist
Kurt Weill Edition, Series I, Volume 1
ed. Gunther Diehl and Jürgen Selk
Tamara Levitz

12

Books
Lady in the Dark: Biography of a Musicalby bruce d. mcclung
Tim Carter13© 2007 Kurt Weill Foundation for Music
7 East 20th Street
New York, NY 10003-1106
tel. (212) 505-5240
fax (212) 353-9663

Published twice a year, the Kurt Weill Newsletter features articles
and reviews (books, performances, recordings) that center on Kurt
Weill but take a broader look at issues of twentieth-century music
and theater. With a print run of 5,000 copies, the Newsletter is distributed worldwide. Subscriptions are free. The editor welcomes
the submission of articles, reviews, and news items for inclusion in
future issues.
A variety of opinions are expressed in the Newsletter; they do notnecessarily represent the publisher's official viewpoint. Letters to
the editor are welcome.

Staff

Performances
Der Jasager in Tokyo
Misako Ohta

15

LoveMusik in New YorkJohn Simon

16

Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in Los Angeles 18
Alan Rich
Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in Boston
William Fregosi

19

Judgment of Paris in Dessau
Horst Koegler

20

Die Dreigroschenoper in Frankfurt
Gisela Maria Schubert

21

Die sieben Todsünden in London
Patrick O’Connor

22

Elmar Juchem, Editor

Carolyn Weber, Associate Editor

Dave Stein, Associate Editor

Brady Sansone, Production

Kurt Weill Foundation Trustees
Kim Kowalke, President

Paul Epstein

Milton Coleman, Vice-President

Walter Hinderer

Guy Stern, Secretary

Welz Kauffman

Philip Getter, Treasurer

Julius Rudel

David Drew and Teresa Stratas, Honorary Trustees
Harold Prince, Trustee Emeritus
Internet Resources
World Wide Web: http://www.kwf.org
E-mail:Information: kwfinfo@kwf.org

Recordings
Happy End on Ghostlight Records
Michael Morley

Topical Weill

Weill-Lenya Research Center: wlrc@kwf.org

23

1a–8a

Kurt Weill Edition: kwe@kwf.org
Cover photo: The Ur-Mahagonny : A scene from theopera’s world premiere in Leipzig, March 1930.
Photo: M. Taggesel; courtesy of the Institut für Theater-,Film- und Fernsehwissenschaft, Universität zu Köln

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

3

Note from the Editor

The finale of Act 1 of LoveMusik . Weill (Michael Cerveris) and Lenya(Donna Murphy) aboard the ship that will bring them to the U.S.
Photo: Sara Krulwich/ The New York Times /Redux

Doom city is booming. Over the past three years,
there have been eight major new Mahagonny productions in Germany alone, and then some: Italy, theNetherlands, France, and Switzerland. This year
offers three productions in the U.S. (two of them
reviewed in this issue). Creative teams and critics alikeare finding that the opera is disturbingly contemporary, and it doesn’t take a major hurricane to make thecase. Should Mahagonny’s topicality frighten us, then?
Perhaps a little. But Weill and Brecht hand us a mirror, so we can gather insights into the mechanics of
our society and the darker sides of human behavior.
Just how much do we want to learn, though? Here,opinions diverge and controversy begins, as the possibilities for the staging of Weill’s opera are seemingly
endless. This is a joy for operagoers, save for the everdissatisfied critic who will complain that productions
are either too didactic or too entertaining.
The feature article of this issue looks back at
another controversy that was sparked by misguided
expectations, assuming that Mahagonny was justanother Stück mit Musik, like Dreigroschenoper. The
1933/34 semi-professional production of Mahagonnyin Copenhagen, the last during Weill’s lifetime andone in which he did not participate, had critics arguing over the proper singing style and casting, a debatethat continued well into the second half of the lastcentury.
Mahagonny Songspiel, the 1927 kernel of the opera,
was Weill’s first work in which Lenya had a role,
immortalizing “Alabama-Song.” New York audiences
currently have a chance to see on Broadway, no less,how she may have gotten the part in the Baden-Badenperformance: LoveMusik, the new show created by
Hal Prince and Alfred Uhry, tells the story of Weill
and Lenya in theatrical terms, and it has the theatercommunity abuzz. Coverage of the show and an
insightful review round out this spring issue.
Elmar Juchem

Program cover from 1934 production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonnyin Copenhagen (see feature article on p. 4). From a collection of programs from
Det ny Teater, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen.

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Volume 25, Number 1

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in Copenhagen,1933/34: An Early Debate about Performing Style
By Michael Fjeldsøe

When Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny saw its first performance in Copenhagen on 30 December 1933 at Det ny Teater (TheNew Theater), it was performed by opera singers but received by anaudience who expected it to sound like the singing actors they knew
from Die Dreigroschenoper and from German recordings. Thus, theCopenhagen performance expands our understanding of the early
performance history of the opera in two ways. First, it was the last
performance of the opera before World War II and is almost
unknown outside of Denmark. Second, it points to the fact thatearly performance tradition was divided into performances bysinging actors and performances by acting singers, and that Kurt
Weill preferred the latter. A short review of early performancesmight be useful as an introduction.
The legendary performance of Mahagonny Songspiel at the festival Deutsche Kammermusik Baden-Baden in the summer of 1927
was literally unique, as it was performed only once, on the eveningof 17 July. Attended by a small audience consisting of contemporary
music aficionados but broadcast live on Südwestfunk, the performance was on everybody’s lips. It helped to establish the notion that
Mahagonny songs ought to be performed by singing actors, as Lotte
Lenya made the “Alabama-Song” an unforgettable experience,
though she was the only non-operatic singer in the six-member
cast. “Even Klemperer couldn’t stop singing ‘Oh Moon of
Alabama,’”1 and he was not alone. Yet one must keep in mind that
Mahagonny Songspiel was not merely an assemblage of solo numbers. It consists mainly of ensemble scenes performed by the fourmale singers or the whole ensemble including the two female voices, “Alabama-Song” being the only one performed by the womenalone.2 Except for Lenya, all singers performed in the other works
on the program as well—Kurzopern by Hindemith, Toch, andMilhaud. Adding to the legend of the Songspiel was Lenya’s recording of “Alabama-Song” (and on the B-side “Denn wie man sichbettet”), recorded for Ultraphon in February 1930.
Weill was eager to see his full-length opera Aufstieg und Fall der
Stadt Mahagonny premiered in Berlin, and the fact that Klemperer
had taken over the Krolloper in 1927 and turned it into Berlin’s
most adventurous opera house seemed to present the perfectopportunity. Negotiations continued into the summer of 1929,
when Klemperer changed his mind and turned Weill down.3
Instead the world premiere took place on 9 March 1930 under
Gustav Brecher at the Neues Theater in Leipzig, where it had five
performances. Three days later, on 12 March 1930, it opened at theLandestheater in Braunschweig under Klaus Nettstraeder (2 performances), and in Kassel (7 performances). Maurice Abravanel, astudent of Weill’s in the early 1920s who had made a career as
kapellmeister in the German provinces, conducted in Kassel. He

knew Weill’s early operas, since he had conducted Der Protagonist
and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren in 1928 in Altenburg and
Gera.
These first performances all took place in opera houses with
opera singers, and Weill made perfectly clear in a letter to Abravanel
that this was what he wanted: “Mahagonny is an opera. An opera forsingers. To cast it with actors is absolutely impossible. Only when I
specifically marked it as ‘spoken’ should there be any spoken words
and any kind of changes are possible only with my explicit permission . . .”4 Productions later that year also met his requirements. In
July 1930 Mahagonny was performed at Deutsches Landestheaterin Prague under George Szell (2 performances) and in Frankfurt
am Main it was premiered during the celebration of the 50th
anniversary of the opera house on 16 October 1930, conducted byHans Wilhelm Steinberg (12 performances).
Efforts to secure a Berlin staging continued in 1930, when Max
Reinhardt acquired the rights. “It is unclear whether he will present
the work in the Deutsches Theater or use one of Berlin’s three large
opera houses for this purpose.”5 At this time, Weill continued toinsist that it had to be performed by professional singers: “People
who only know the libretto have spread the rumor that Mahagonny
could be cast with actors. Of course, that would be absolutely
impossible . . .”6 In the end, nothing happened, as Reinhardt
informed Universal Edition in December that he had to withdraw
the piece at the Deutsches Theater due to political pressure. The
content of his letter was made public.7
Only when it became clear that none of the opera houses inBerlin would take up the opera did Weill accept the idea of a production in a theater with Lotte Lenya performing the part of Jenny,which required changes in the vocal lines to accommodate her,omission of the difficult “Kraniche-Duett,” and recomposed versions of “Ach, bedenken Sie, Herr Jakob Schmidt” and the ensemble “Lasst euch nicht verführen.” Furthermore, the number ofplayers in the orchestra was reduced. It opened on 21 December
1931 at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, conducted by one of themost experienced and able conductors of contemporary music,
Alexander von Zemlinsky. This production presumably lasted
about 36 performances (it closed on 31 January 1932) and resulted
in a recording of highlights with members of the Berlin cast in
1932. Yet another production opened in Vienna’s Raimund-Theateron 26 April 1932 (11 performances); Lenya took center stage again,
thereby confirming the Berlin performance tradition.
That accounts for all the productions prior to the Copenhagenstaging. Plans for productions in Dortmund, Essen, and Oldenburg
were cancelled for political reasons. But my research on early performances yielded new information about the circumstances of theKurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

5choices cannot be shaped by narrow-mindedworldviews or the opinions of political parties.”14 In his view, he was not the one politicizing the theater by performing Weill and Brecht(or other modern operas), it was those demanding that he suppress such productions whoturned an artistic institution into a politicalarena.
The whole affair hit the national press, andWeill himself cited the Oldenburg incident as
one of several cases where Mahagonny was literally sabotaged: “Oldenburg has also programmed Mahagonny, and Intendant Götze ismaking every effort to push this performancethrough. As a form of preparation he intended
to broadcast a few selections from Mahagonny
during the national radio’s theater week.
Prohibited from doing so, he read the [opera’s]
text to the theater committee, whereupon permission was granted. Then the Nazis tried to
cut the telephone cables on the evening of thebroadcast, and only at the last minute were theirplans thwarted. When, shortly after, Götze presented [Georg] Kaiser’s Mississippi, theList of numbers for a broadcast on 6 November 1930 from Theater Oldenburg (Niedersächsisches
Oldenburg Nazis confused it with MahagonnyLandesarchiv, Staatsarchiv Oldenburg).
and made a veritable ‘Mahagonny scandal’ at theend of Mississippi.”15 Oldenburg was a lostcause, though, as the two aforementioned parties won the city eleccancelation at the Landestheater Oldenburg and the nationwide
tions, and the Nazis became the state’s strongest party in May 1931,
radio broadcast of some excerpts. The broadcast on 6 November
winning an absolute majority exactly a year later—more than eight
1930 lasted thirty minutes and consisted of an introduction bymonths before Hitler’s rise to power. Accordingly, Götze had toIntendant Hellmuth Götze followed by six numbers from thepostpone the premiere yet again and finally cancelled the producopera. The program was part of a weeklong series publicizingtion altogether.16
German theater, to which Oldenburg had been asked to contribute8
a “modern music” program. The theater had already acquired theperformance rights on 29 December 1929 for a premiere on or after
Aufstieg und Fall in Copenhagen
12 March 1930.9 A week later, Götze wrote to Universal Edition torequest permission to postpone staging the opera to the first half of
Copenhagen’s audiences had experienced the music theater ofthe next season, due to the “over-the-top [überspitzte] world preBrecht and Weill first-hand when Dreigroschenoper opened inmiere in Leipzig.”10 He did not wish to disrupt negotiations in theJanuary 1930 at Det ny Teater. It was conducted by Erik Tuxen, a
Landtag (state parliament) over future funding of the theater, andDanish composer and conductor educated mainly in Germany. He
Universal Edition granted his request.11 When Weill learned of the
had been engaged at Stadttheater Lübeck as a vocal coach 1927–29,
plans for a radio broadcast, he agreed in principle, provided thattaking part in a production of the show there. The musicians,“only individual, self-contained numbers . . . be presented without
though presented as “Det Ny Teaters Jazzband,” were really thecontext and without connecting text passages, simply as ‘selections
German Oscar Joost’s Orchestra. Later, actress Gerda Madsen perfrom Mahagonny.’”12 The program eventually included six numformed songs from the piece on several occasions and study groups
bers that were conducted by Landesmusikdirektor Schüler: “1. Songof high school students examined Weill’s music with the help of
mit Chor ‘O Moon of Alabama’ / 2. Duett Jenny – Jim [“Crane
piano scores and recordings.17 Furthermore, Der Jasager and Der
Duet”] / 3. Szene vor der Schenke ‘Tief in Alaskas schneeweissen
Lindberghflug were performed in Copenhagen in the early 1930s.
Wäldern’ mit Ensemble / 4. Der Hurrikan in Bewegung auf
Then, on 30 December 1933, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt
Mahagonny ‘O furchtbares Ereignis’ / 5. Lied des Jim ‘Wenn der
Mahagonny had its first performance at a private session for memHimmel hell wird’ / 6. Ensemble ‘Auf nach Mahagonny.’”13
bers of Operaselskabet af 1932 (Opera Society of 1932), which was
The broadcast took place just days before the Oldenburg cityin charge of the production. The performance on 1 January 1934
council elections and thus became an issue in the fierce campaign.
was open to the public and also broadcast live on the radio.
In particular, the German National People’s Party (DeutschAdditional performances took place in January; apparently there
Nationale Volkspartei) and National Socialists attacked the broadwere eight altogether.18
cast and Götze himself, who, in his introduction, had advocated
The Copenhagen production upheld the tradition of 1930 bytheater for the whole population: “The guidelines for our artistic
employing opera singers. Helge Bonnén, founder of the opera sociand managerial decisions, which have been in place for years, areety, conducted an orchestra of 32 musicians, some of them membased on the general assumption that a cultural institution which isbers of the orchestra of the Royal Guards. Though the Opera
supported by public funds provided by the entire population also
Society of 1932 consisted partly of amateurs, the lead roles wereneeds to serve the entire population. This means that programming

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Volume 25, Number 1

cast with professional singers. Paul Hansen, who sang the principal
male role of Jim Mahoney and also directed, had trained at The
Royal Theater in Copenhagen. After some years there he worked at
the Deutsche Oper in Berlin from 1913–25, and then he was a manager and director at the theater in Gera for five years. The Gera
connection is very revealing, as it shows he had knowledge of Weill’smusic theater from the period prior to Die Dreigroschenoper. On 2
April 1928, as mentioned above, Gera premiered two of Weill’s
operas, Der Zar lässt sich photographieren and Der Protagonist, conducted by Maurice Abravanel. Weill attended a performance anddeclared his satisfaction with the production. This experiencemight well have contributed to Paul Hansen’s conception of how
Mahagonny ought to be performed.19
The part of Bill was sung by the Norwegian-born Georg Leicht,
also trained at the opera academy of the Royal Theater. Lilli
Hoffmann, a successful Wagnerian soprano who had appeared in
Berlin and Bayreuth, sang Begbick. Jenny was performed by theyoung Elly Bjørk Thomsen, who had her breakthrough with thisrole. She began her career singing operetta, then took a two-year
break after her marriage. The tenor Ejner Jensen (Fatty) had awealth of experience; after graduating from the Royal Academy ofMusic he had performed in radio, opera, operetta and as a singing
guitar player in Copenhagen restaurants.
The audience gave the opera a favorable reception and mostcritics were friendly, too. Those critics who viewed it as modern,contemporary music theater gave it good marks. Berlingske Tidendecalled it “a performance which, despite terrible flaws and obvious

Kurt Weill Newsletter

mistakes, was entertaining and intense, with scenes whose tempo
and form were something out of the ordinary” and “the applause at
the end was passionate and the curtain calls numerous.”20
Musically it was “a huge artistic victory”; the score was characterized as “music of our time and of our youth.”21 The reviewer of
Politiken stated, “Mahagonny is a formidable example of modern
opera. It captures and conveys the heartbeat of today.”22
Reviewers who focused on the work as social criticism cited several shortcomings. Prior to the first performance the press hadraised expectations by presenting Brecht as “the communist whose
works were burned in the streets after the Nazis took over, now living on Thurø at Karin Michaëlis’s place,” and the libretto wasdescribed as “brutal and violent, propagandistic and bloody, mocking anything and everything, caustic acid.”23 These expectations
the opera could not fulfill. In fact, the reviews found the production
lacked Brecht’s characteristic bitterness: “No, it was no satire on
society, but a humorously ironic treatment of opera. Brecht it wasnot. It was gentle, pretty, and Danish . . . That’s why everything
went so well.”24 One reviewer mentioned that the piece had been
cut and that the final scene with the demonstrations had beenshortened.25
The casting of opera singers stirred up what may have been thefirst debate over the proper style of singing. Elly Bjørk Thomsen
defended her style and provided the key to her understanding of
the role. When the newspaper Dagens Nyheder asked, “What did
you learn from playing Jenny?”, she replied: “An intimate knowledge of my means of expression. I have sung Carmen and I have

The Copenhagen program billed Aufstieg und Fall as a “Jazz Opera” and combined Acts 2 and 3 into one (from a collection of programs from Det ny Teater, Det
Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagen).

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

Elly Bjørk Thomsen (Jenny), Lilli Hoffmann (Begbick), and Paul Hansen (Jim) during “Liebe.” Photo: Holger Damgaards teaterfotos, Det Kongelige Bibliotek,
Copenhagensung Bajadere, and in both of these works the external gestures
were of great importance. At first, I emphasized them in my portrayal of Jenny, too. But I sensed that something was wrong. I realized that approach would not work; I had to turn inward and findsomething completely different—as few outwardly directed gestures as possible. In that way I succeeded in becoming her.” Thereporter continued: “It has been said that the part of Jenny should
not be sung, but rather spoken?” She replied, “I know, but I feeldeep in my heart that that is wrong. Weill would not have createdsuch beautiful music if he didn’t want it sung.”26
The interviewer alluded to an opinion expressed by
Copenhagen’s most prominent theater critic, Svend Borberg, in thenewspaper Politiken. He had compared her to Carola Neher (confusing the role of Jenny in Dreigroschenoper with the role of Jenny in
Mahagonny): “Jenny needs hardly any voice at all (Carola Neher, theBerlin Jenny, was ideal with a voice like a tired schoolgirl). . . . Jenny[i.e., Elly Bjørk Thomsen] sang with a huge tone.” 27 Even though
he misidentified the Berlin Jenny as Carola Neher—she never sang
the role anywhere—his statement shows the importance of earlyrecordings in establishing expectations of singing style long before
listeners attended an actual performance. After Roma Bahn had
left, Neher played Polly in Berlin’s Dreigroschenoper, the one whosings “Seeräuber-Jenny,” and her recording of this song was well

7

known in Copenhagen. Many people knew these recordings ofsongs from Dreigroschenoper and other plays: “Excerpts were known
from the gramophone, the concert hall, the press . . .”28; “[It is] apiece which lovers of new music simply have been thirsting for andfor which their gramophones after all gave them merely a substitute.”29
Sven Møller Kristensen, a young music critic at Ekstrabladet
and a prominent figure in the cultural left of the 1930s, shared
Borberg’s view and clearly preferred the style of Dreigroschenoper.
He saw Mahagonny as Weill’s “problem child,” which “contains
many fine numbers, but its fundamental defect is the form, a hodgepodge of opera, operetta, and revue theater. Frankly, there is toomuch music in it. Brecht’s libretto does not lend itself to being
through-composed. Mahagonny is as illogical in its form as
Dreigroschenoper is logical: an operetta turned inside out. Kurt Weill
should not be sung in the bad opera-style heard here, or operatically at all, but in the particular German style of revue, which in thiscountry has been mastered by Lulu Ziegler. Elly Bjørk Thomsen
made an effort in that direction, but it did not seem natural.”30
Arguing from a more traditional perspective, the music critic
Kai Flor took the opposite stand: “Mrs. Elly Bjørk Thomsen’s performance of the role of Jenny was crucial to the opera’s success. Her
singing was supple as well as fierce, and her voice had all the defiance it needed in ‘Denn wie man sich bettet, so liegt man.’ It evenhad to be repeated!” 31 Confronted with the view that her voice was
too large for Jenny, Elly Bjørk Thomsen referred to Weill’s approvalof her interpretation in the daily B.T. (not to be confused with the
Berlingske Tidende): “Well, some critics have stated that the opera
should be spoken, but I certainly do not believe they are right.
Would Kurt Weill have sent us a telegram to say that he was very
pleased, if we had misunderstood his opera on such a crucial point?
I hardly think so! . . . The part of Jenny . . . is so brilliantly singable,that it would be absurd not to make the most of it.”32
The cable from Weill was reported in the Copenhagen press
after the live broadcast of the first public performance, which Weillsupposedly had heard: “On the occasion of the broadcast of
Mahagonny from Det ny Teater, the composer Kurt Weil[l] sent acable to the theater, expressing his satisfaction with the performance: ‘Went over beautifully. The music exactly as I intended. The
artists are magnificent—congratulations!’”33 The telegram wasreally a hoax, though, possibly a publicity stunt staged by the theater. When Weill heard of the production and “his” cable in a letterfrom Margarete Steffin, he wrote to Lenya: “I had no idea that
Mahagonny was given there, and I certainly didn’t send atelegram.”34
Due to the success of the Berlin performance and commercial
recordings of songs by Weill and Brecht, and also due to the statureof Lenya, not only a magnificent performer but the composer’s wife
and, after his death, a key figure in preserving his legacy, it is no
surprise that a performance style minimizing vocal quality was for
decades considered more authentic. But when we review early performances up to and including the one in Copenhagen, it becomes
clear that most early productions, in line with Weill’s original preference, embodied another performance tradition.

Notes
Michael Fjeldsøe is Associate Professor of Musicology at the University of
Copenhagen. This article is an amended excerpt of his article, “Syngendeskuespillere eller agerende operasangere: Om den rette sangstil i operaen‘Mahagonny’” (for full citation see p. 8a of this Newsletter).

1. Hans Curjel, “Erinnerungen um Kurt Weill,” Melos 37, no. 3 (March1970), 82.
2. Bert Brecht – Kurt Weill, Mahagonny Songspiel: Urfassung 1927, ed.

8Volume 25, Number 1

Kurt Weill Newsletter

15. Kurt Weill, “Mit geistigen Mitteln
nichts zu machen!” General-Anzeiger für
Dortmund und das gesamte rheinischwestfälische Industriegebiet, 21 December
1930; Farneth, Kurt Weill, 115. Götze presented Weill’s revised version of the opera
during a meeting of the city council’s theater committee on 23 October 1930, andadjusted a few passages himself; see minutes of the meeting in the papers of the
Stadtarchiv, in Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv – Staatsarchiv Oldenburg, Best.
262-1, Nr. 2978. The Nazis’ attempt to cut
the cables is not corroborated by the local
Oldenburg press.
16. Götze asked for permission to
postpone it to the next season in a letter toUniversal Edition, 23 December 1930;
Niedersächsisches
Landesarchiv–
Staatsarchiv Oldenburg, Best. 172-1, Nr.
30. When the Nazis took over in May
1932, Götze left Oldenburg and became
intendant in Magdeburg, where he directed Weill’s Silbersee, after which he was discharged by the Nazis.
17. Under the umbrella of the
Association of High School Students, thegroups studied both contemporary art
Begbick, Jenny, Jim, Moses, and Fatty. Photo: Holger Damgaards teaterfotos, Det Kongelige Bibliotek, Copenhagenmusic and jazz as forms of modern music.
The young composer Otto Mortensen disDavid Drew (Wien: Universal Edition, 1963). Isolated performances of thecussed Weill in a session on 19 December 1932; see Vi Gymnasiaster 4, no. 5
Songspiel in Hamburg (October 1932) and in a revised version in Paris(December 1932), 14; and no. 6 (January 1933), 11.
(December 1932), London (July 1933), and Rome (December 1933) did not
18. Niels Krabbe, “Mahagonny hos Brecht og Weill,” Musik & Forskning
affect the early performance history of the opera. See David Farneth/Elmar
16 (1990–91), 127.
Juchem/Dave Stein, Kurt Weill: A Life in Pictures and Documents
19. See Schebera, Kurt Weill, 86–87.
(Woodstock, NY: Overlook Press, 2000), 60.
20. blk., “Opførelsen af Mahagonny interesserede meget,” Berlingske
3. Jürgen Schebera, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life (New Haven: Yale
Tidende, 31 December 1933.
University Press, 1995), 154–55.
21. K.F. [Kai Flor], “Musikken,” Berlingske Tidende, 31 December 1933.
4. Letter from Weill to Abravanel, 2 February 1930, quoted in Kurt Weill
22. H.S. [Hugo Seligmann], “Musiken til Mahagonny,” Politiken, 31
Newsletter 13, no. 2 (Fall 1995), 18.
December 1933.
5. Die Musik 22, no. 8 (May 1930), 646.
23. Mogens, “Kurt Weills Opera, ‘der ikke kan spilles,’” Berlingske
6. Letter from Weill to Abravanel, 7 May 1930, quoted in Kurt Weill
Tidende, 28 December 1933.
Newsletter 13, no. 2 (Fall 1995), 18.
24. Svend Borberg, “Mahagonny paa Det ny Teater,” Politiken, 31
7. Press clippings in Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv – Staatsarchiv
December 1933.
Oldenburg, Best. 172-1, Nr. 30, e.g., Der Mittag (Düsseldorf), 17 December
25. Ibid.
1930. Thanks to Wolfgang Henninger from the Landesarchiv for providing
26. Rong., “Jenny fra Mahagonny: Fru Elly Bjørk Thomsen hader Jazz,
copies of documents and clippings concerning Mahagonny.
men elsker Weill,” Dagens Nyheder, 6 January 1934.
8. Letter from NORAG, Nordische Rundfunk-Aktiengesellschaft,
27. Svend Borberg, “Mahagonny paa Det ny Teater,” Politiken, 31
Sendestelle Bremen to Indendant Götze, Landestheater Oldenburg, 30 SepDecember 1933.
tember 1930, in Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv – Staatsarchiv Oldenburg,
28. blk, Berlingske Tidende, 31 December 1933.
Best. 172-1, Nr. 30.
29. K.F. [Kai Flor], Berlingske Tidende, 31 December 1933.
9. Register of the Oldenburger Landestheater. I would like to thank
30. Kris. [Sven Møller Kristensen], “Mahagonny,” Ekstrabladet, 2Martina Kamphus of the Oldenburger Landestheater for providing a copy ofJanuary 1934.
the relevant page from the register.
31. K.F. [Kai Flor], “Musikken,” Berlingske Tidende, 31 December 1933.
10. Letter of 19 March 1930 from Götze to Universal Edition; Nieder32. “Klog og velment Kritik stiver en ægte Kunstner af,” B.T., 6 Januarysächsisches Landesarchiv – Staatsarchiv Oldenburg, Best. 172-1, Nr. 30.
1934.
11. According to the theater’s register: “Premiere according to letter of 4
33. Berlingske Tidende, 2 January 1934.
April 1930 extended until 1 December 1930.” This is confirmed by a letter
34. Weill, letter to Lenya, 12 January 1934; Speak Low (When You Speakfrom Universal Edition to Weill, 5 April 1930; see Kurt Weill: Briefwechsel mit
Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, trans. and ed. by Lys
der Universal Edition, ed. by Nils Grosch (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2002), 241.
Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke (Berkeley: University of California Press,
12. Weill quoted his letter to the Oldenburg theater in a letter to Universal
1996), 110.
Edition, 12 October 1930; see Briefwechsel mit der Universal Edition, 271.
13. Typed manuscript of the program, in Niedersächsisches Landesarchiv– Staatsarchiv Oldenburg, Best. 172-1, Nr. 30.
14. His introduction was published in full under the headline“Mahagonny im Rundfunk,” in Nachrichten für Stadt und Land (Oldenburg),
7 November 1930.

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

9Sidebar: Aufstieg und Fall in Berlin, 1931/32

Roughly three weeks into the run of Mahagonny in Berlin, on 11 and 12 January 1932,
Weill appeared as piano accompanist in a reading by Karl Kraus of excerpts from theopera. At that time, Weill was considering a musical adaptation of one of Kraus’s publishedstories, but the idea never took flight. Aside from publishing Die Fackel, Kraus was famousfor his public readings of Nestroy, Shakespeare, and Offenbach, in which he read and sang
all the parts. He was infamous, though, for his vanity and craving for recognition. During
his readings, the pianist was not allowed to be visible on stage and thus condemned to playbehind a screen. Presumably Weill received different treatment. Lenya’s performance inBerlin had enraptured Kraus and he tried (unsuccessfully) to convince her to perform in
Offenbach’s Périchole in Vienna. For Kraus’s importance in the Offenbach renaissance, see
Joel Galand’s article in this Newsletter 22, no. 2 (Fall 2004).

Announcement of the first of two evenings in
Berliner Tageblatt , 3 January 1932.

Letter from Hans Heinsheimer to
Weill, 31 December 1931
I’ve talked a lot about Mahagonny with
Karl Kraus, who is very much looking
forward to a recital of a few passages
with your accompaniment. By the way,
Kraus, too, couldn’t stop gushing about
Lenya’s absolutely fabulous and grandaccomplishment and heartily congratulates her on the overall sensational success. Of course, it would be really great
if Kraus would do a reading of theentire Mahagonny in Vienna, and I will
try one more time to talk him into it.

Letter from Weill to UE, 13 January
1932
Karl Kraus’s reading from Mahagonny
was quite interesting, but—between you
and me—it corresponded so little with
my own views, and was musically so
deficient, that I couldn’t make much ofit. After this attempt at collaboration,
I’ve come to the conclusion that Kraus
belongs to an older generation which
isn’t of much use to me in creative
terms.

Announcement of Ernst Josef Aufricht’s Mahagonny production in Berlin and, directly below, of a reading by
Kraus of Offenbach’s Vert-Vert . From the Berliner Tageblatt , 1 January 1932.

Karl Kraus

10

Volume 25, Number 1

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Search for Sheet Music and Band
Arrangements
Wanted: Help from Our Readers
The Kurt Weill Edition is preparing a volume entitled “Popular
Adaptations, 1927–1950,” edited by Charles Hamm. The 300-page
volume will contain a gallery and catalogue of all sheet music editions, adaptations, arrangements, etc. published during Weill’s lifetime. A selection of these will appear in full-size facsimile. While wehave located and obtained more than 170 editions and images (manycoming from national libraries), there are still a number of missing
items.
Below, we list the missing publications according to their country oforigin. Where possible, a photo of a similar piece is provided forreference. Please contact us if you have any information about anyof the missing items: kwe@kwf.org(Heugel)“Tango” piano seul, 1934 (title and imprint shown below):Though engraved, this instrumental number may have been
withdrawn from the Marie Galante album (see above).

France(Editions Max Eschig)“Chant d’amour” chant et piano; chantseul“L’inanité de l’effort humain” chant et
piano; chant seul

Eschig’s edition of“Ballade de la vie
agréable” for voice
only (chant seul)(Editions Salabert)“Surabaya Johnny” chant et piano; chant seul
“Bilbao-Song” chant et piano; chant seul
(Editions CODA, Heugel)“Youkali” chant et piano; chant seul (© 1935 [not 1946])(Chappell S.A.)“The Right Guy for Me” (L’homme qu’il me faut) chant et
piano; chant seul
“September Song” (J’ai peur de l’automne) chant et piano;chant seul

A 1951 edition of “September
Song” for voice only, occasioned by the release of thefilm September Affair (Lesamants de Capri)“The Right Guy for Me” was published ina French edition in 1939, but no copy
with a cover has been traced.

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

11

United Kingdom

United States (band arrangements only)(Chappell & Co., Ltd.)“Piano Selection” from A Kingdom for a Cow“September Song” 1947 printing(Crawford Music Corp.)“There’s Nowhere to Go But Up!” (arr. ?)(Chappell & Co., Inc.)“This Is New” (arr. Jack Mason)“My Ship” (arr. Bob Noeltner)“Speak Low” (arr. Bob Noeltner)“All At Once” (arr. Bob Noeltner)

Band arrangement of“September Song”
published by
Crawford in 1938

Jack Mason’s1948 arrangementof “Here I’ll Stay”

An Australian edition of“September Song.” Themissing British 1947
edition may have had asimilar cover design.

Italy“September Song” (Settembre) per voce e pianoforte

Australia(Chappell & Co., Ltd. Sydney)“If Love Remains”“Song of the Rhineland”
Australian edition of “All At Once.”
The small print on the cover showsthat the two missing titles from thefilm Where Do We Go from Here?
were also published as sheet music.

1951 edition (voce sola)of “September Song”

Various Countries
While there is no positive evidence, it is possible that popular
adaptations of Weill’s music were published in the following
countries: Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Norway, and theSoviet Union. Any information would be greatly appreciated.

12
12

VolumeVolume 14,
25,Number
Number11Music
Der Protagonist, op. 15
Kurt Weill Edition, Series I, Volume 1
Edited by Gunther Diehl and Jürgen Selk
New York: Kurt Weill Foundation for Music; European American Music
Corporation, 2006. 382 pp. (Critical Report 57 pp.)
ISBN: 0-913574-64-3

With their impeccable edition of Weill’s first opera, Der Protagonist,
Gunther Diehl, Jürgen Selk, Giselher Schubert (whom the editors
thank for his extraordinary contribution), and the Kurt Weill
Edition have presented a tremendous gift to scholars, performers,
and fans. This publication, the latest in the utterly remarkable Kurt
Weill Edition, stands out for its conceptual clarity, attention todetail, competence, effective and transparent editing strategies,
accessibility, and scholarly erudition. It is an achievement that will
surely bring Weill scholarship forward by leaps and bounds, providing the first sustained access to an opera of tremendous importance not only to Weill’s compositional career, but also to the history of music in the early twentieth century. All of us who love andstudy Weill can feel particularly grateful for this achievement.
The edition is presented in two volumes, according to standardpractice. The large main tome contains a substantial “Introduction”
by Gunther Diehl and Giselher Schubert, in an exquisite translation by Stephen Hinton. Here the authors discuss the genesis, compositional process, performance materials, premiere, and receptionof the opera (both at the premiere, and before and after World WarII) in minute detail. This essay is followed by a selection of carefully chosen facsimiles of sources, which serve as a preface to the complete edition of the opera (which takes up the bulk of the publication). The second, smaller companion volume or Critical Report
includes a “Statement of Source Valuation and Usage,” followed by
an extended “Commentary: Critical Notes,” and ending with acareful list of “Source Descriptions.”
I did not know what was in store when I sat down to read
Gunther Diehl’s and Giselher Schubert’s “Introduction.” Bothnames are intimately familiar to Weill scholars: Diehl for his pioneering study of Weill’s Der Protagonist (Der junge Kurt Weill undseine Oper “Der Protagonist” [Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1994]) and
Giselher Schubert for a career so rich and inspiring in musicological and humanistic research on Hindemith, Weill, Schoenberg, andtwentieth-century music that it can hardly be subsumed in a single
sentence or list of works. I felt these two authors’ considerable talent and experience in every aspect of this introduction, from its
thoughtful concern with presenting all known information about
the opera in as objective a context as possible to its utter precisionin outlining the opera’s chronology in terms of genesis and performance. In the spirit of maximum revelation, the authors provide
extended quotations from their primary sources throughout, relying primarily on Weill’s correspondence with Universal Edition,and original newspaper reviews (which they offer in English translation in the main text with the original language quoted in theextensive endnotes). These reviews are an absolute treasure chest
for Weill scholars in that they outline a reception history with

Kurt
Kurt Weill
Weill Newsletter
Newsletter

implications far beyond the boundaries of this particular work.
Only once do the authors depart from their documentary perspective, however, when they suddenly introduce a bulleted list of reasons for the decline in quantity and quality of productions afterWorld War II—a section of their introduction that seems strangelyout of synch with the rest. Otherwise, their essay is terrific, andtremendously useful to Weill scholars.
The edited score itself is a pure joy. For scholars like myself, whoremember first studying this opera on faded copies of the 1926 UE
piano-vocal score, it is an incredible treat to be able to read its fullorchestral score for the very first time. As the editors make clear in
the Critical Report and “Introduction,” Weill was particularly
meticulous in producing the main source used for this edition, aholograph full score completed in 1925. He thus left posterity whatmost editors can only dream about: a rare, almost perfect, original
manuscript source. The youthful earnestness and precision of thatsource are everywhere evident in this volume, accentuated by thehigh quality and sheer beauty of the typeset chosen by the Kurt
Weill Edition. Even the frequent footnote numbers in the text
referring to the “Commentary” in the accompanying Critical
Report appear unobtrusive, often referencing information I found
not only helpful, but actually exciting and interesting. The transparency of the whole resulted in a curious and welcome effect: I felt
as if I were directly experiencing Weill’s compositional process while
reading! Through the very precision and thoughtfulness of theirundertaking, I thought, the editors had cleared away decades ofobscurity from the history of this opera, giving the public access forthe first time to the secrets of Weill’s youthful compositional
process.
The edition ends with a bang, in the form of the “Statement of
Source Valuation and Usage” and “Commentaries” in the Critical
Report. I found the description of sources utterly riveting, and somarvelously researched and clearly articulated that I could remember weeks later minute details of each source, fascinated by theirdifferences and the intricate history that had produced them. The
commentaries on editorial variants, and on questions raised by thesources, are fastidious, accessible, and clear. I am not sure if the editors realize what a tremendous contribution they have just made to
the study of twentieth-century music through their dedicatedattention to detail and material truth. This is extraordinarily highquality work, and an achievement of the highest order for Weill
scholarship.
Tamara Levitz
University of California at Los Angeles

Kurt
KurtWeill
WeillNewsletter
Newsletter

Volume 14,
25,Number
Number11

1313

Books
Lady in the Dark:
Biography of a Musicalbruce d. mcclung
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, xxi, 274 pp.
ISBN 0-19-512012-4

A number of recent books on the American musical suggest a burgeoning interest in a genre slowly entering the academic canon. In
part, this slowness has been due to a typical resistance to so-called
popular culture. In part, however, it reflects the continued presence, or not, of these shows in the collective memory, and theirproblematic status as “works” fit, or even just available, for performance and study. As a result, surveys of the musical often tend torest on shaky ground, uncertain of their materials and even, perhaps, of their particularities: hence the widespread retreat into
broader generic, cultural, and/or social trends. Yet without thedetailed investigation still to be done on the sources and interpretation of individual musicals, it is hard to sustain even the less outrageous claims made for them in general surveys of the genre. Twovery recent one-work monographs on classic Broadway musicals
each attempt to grapple with these problems. I had an easier timewith my “Oklahoma!” The Making of an American Musical (NewHaven and London: Yale University Press, 2007), given the iconic
status of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s first collaboration. Kurt
Weill’s Lady in the Dark causes bruce mcclung more problems, forreasons that are worth exploring.
He begins, sensibly enough, with an evocative account of theshow’s opening night at the Alvin Theatre on 21 January 1941.
Unlike Johnny Johnson (1936), The Eternal Road (1937), andKnickerbocker Holiday (1938)—each unusual for various reasons—Lady in the Dark saw Weill engaging with standard Broadway production methods, with a book by Moss Hart—well known for astring of successful plays and musicals with co-writer George
Kaufman—and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. As mcclung outlines, theidea came from Hart, whose periodic bouts of depression led him
to engage in the newly fashionable enterprise of psychoanalysis
under Lawrence S. Kubie, who became an unofficial adviser for theshow and thereafter claimed significant credit for its accuracy, notleast in terms of the diagnosis and subsequent “curing” of its heroine, Liza Elliott, by way of free association through a series ofdreams. Liza, editor of the fashion magazine Allure (a take-off on
Vogue), is living with an older, married man willing to leave his wife
for her; she considers a fling with a Hollywood idol (first played byVictor Mature); but she finds a safer future with her advertising
manager, turning a stormy professional relationship into lastminute respect that will become something more so long as Liza
agrees to share the top job and maybe even step down. Her increasing self-awareness is signified by a melody from her childhood
which she can barely remember prior to psychoanalysis—its memory buried by trauma—but which she learns to sing again. The factthat her future husband also knows “My Ship,” which we hear infull only at the end of the show, sets the seal on their relationship.

Clearly, this is no ordinary musical—it was labeled a “musicalplay,” a term gaining cachet even before Oklahoma!—although it
has parallels with contemporary works such as Rodgers and Hart’s
Pal Joey (which opened on 25 December 1940, just before the tryout of Lady in the Dark in Boston on 30 December) dealing with theseamier side of modern life in a manner perhaps influenced by the
emerging genre of film noir. The three dream scenes, a Glamour
Dream, a Wedding Dream (both in Act I), and a Circus Dream in Act
II, scene 1—a fourth “Hollywood Dream” was planned but cut—provide a musical justification somewhat less conventional than the“let’s put on a show” trope. The idea was not entirely new, and likewise the associated phenomenon of the dream-ballet, as in the
Kern–Hammerstein Three Sisters (London, 1934) and Very Warmfor May (1939), as well as Rodgers and Hart’s Babes in Arms (1937)
and Pal Joey, and Irving Berlin’s Louisiana Purchase (opened 28
May 1940). In Weill’s case, however, he provides extended musicalsequences (for example, 778 measures in the Glamour Dream). The
longest, the Circus Dream, is the most heterogeneous, culminatingin back-to-back showstoppers, the well-known patter song
“Tschaikowsky”—which was delivered at breakneck speed by
Danny Kaye—and then Liza’s “The Saga of Jenny” as part of her
mock “trial by jury” (mcclung notes the parallel with Gilbert and
Sullivan) for being unable to make up her mind between her lovers(Jenny, in contrast, regularly makes up her mind to disastrous
effect). The show’s star Gertrude Lawrence turned this into araunchy tour de force.
All this is covered very well in mcclung’s “biography” of Ladyin the Dark, which looks backward from opening night to the show’s
genesis, the creation (and substance) of the musical score, and thetryout, followed by the Broadway run, the national tour and thenthe return to Broadway (playing for a time concurrently with
Oklahoma!) plus a trip to the West Coast before the show finallyclosed in early July 1943 (somewhat annoyingly, mcclung is vague
on precise dates here and elsewhere). This was after a total of 777
performances, for which Lawrence, trouper that she was, was indisposed for only eleven. We then have a (slightly feeble, alas) chapter
on the “cultural context,” and a longer (and better) one on the later
versions of the show, including the 1944 movie with Ginger Rogers
as Liza, various radio broadcasts (including one in 1947 with
Lawrence recreating her role, and another in 1953 with Judy
Garland), and a television version (1954) with Ann Sothern. Ladyin the Dark also played a prominent part in the TwentiethCentury–Fox film Star! (1968), a bio-pic of Gertrude Lawrence14

Volume 25, Number 1(played by Julie Andrews). As mcclung notes, stage revivals havebeen less frequent, with German versions in 1951 (sponsored by
the U.S. Office of Military Government; the same year as
Oklahoma! appeared in Berlin), 1976–77, and 1983, a 1981 production in Nottingham (England) with Celeste Holm (the first Ado
Annie in Oklahoma!), the Royal National Theatre (London) revival
in 1997, and others in Philadelphia and Italy in 2001. Clearly,
mcclung is right to extend the notion of “biography” through theshow’s reception-history, although he is very worried—and perhaps unduly so—that Lady in the Dark can never work for modern
audiences given the need for a star, the extreme staging demands,
and the “downright sexist” (p. 197) language that would force judicious cuts (so Don Giovanni is downright sexist and should likewise
be cut?. . .). His conclusion (p. 198), “to keep it as loosely as a period piece, without being slavish to the original,” is fraught with editorial consequences, but mcclung elsewhere gives better reasons forthe problems facing the show: while forward-looking in terms ofstructure and plot, it was less so in style, and even during its own
wartime period, Lady in the Dark soon became outdated and irrelevant. The feel-good patriotic overtones of Oklahoma! were much
more in keeping with the times, and Rodgers and Hammersteinfound a way to avoid such superfluous set-pieces as“Tschaikowsky.” Moreover (but mcclung fails to point it out),
Oklahoma! was explicitly associated with prior canonic Americana,including Show Boat and Porgy and Bess, whereas Lady in the Dark
was left to float more freely. The creators of Oklahoma! prided
themselves on not having big-name stars (surely a dig at Lawrence
and Ethel Merman), and they cleverly inserted the show into several different histories; Lady in the Dark was a fad of the moment
anchored solely by its lead player.
Here and elsewhere, mcclung sometimes fails to join up thedots. His “biography” does not always do justice to the biographiesof those involved in its creation. We learn a fair amount about Hart,
Gershwin, and Weill, but much less about producer Sam H. Harris,
production and lighting designer Hassard Short (who also staged
the musical sequences), and choreographer Albertina Rasch.
However, the major unanswered question is the extent to which theshow was written (and rewritten) for Gertrude Lawrence. Moss
Hart originally had in mind for Liza Elliott Marlene Dietrich (at avery early stage) and then Katharine Cornell, but in late March or
early April 1940 (again, mcclung is annoyingly unclear on dates) he
saw Gertrude Lawrence in action and immediately switched horses(although Hart was slow to tell Cornell). Negotiations with
Lawrence dragged on until she signed her contract, apparently in
July (another unclear date): the terms were extraordinary, with asalary of $2,000 per week plus a significant percentage of the grossreceipts. Also, she was deemed to be irreplaceable and never had anunderstudy. We learn all this in chapter 4 (on the tryout), but surely it belongs in chapter 2 (on the show’s genesis), given that Weill
and Gershwin got down to work only in May 1940, when Hart was
still writing the book, and major decisions about the structure of
the show were still being made in late summer and fall, and even(but not unusually) during the rehearsals scheduled to start on 15
November (although mcclung does not tell us when they did). The
chronology is crucial, not least because Lady in the Dark is, potentially at least, replete with elements of Lawrence’s own biography.
After her divorce from director Francis Gordon-Howley, she quickly became engaged in 1928 to Bertrand L. Taylor Jr., a New Yorkstockbroker, but then called the marriage off; she married again
only on 4 July 1940 (when she was considering the contract for
Lady in the Dark) to theater-owner Richard Aldrich. Lawrence’s

Kurt Weill Newsletter

other lovers included Sir Gerald du Maurier, the Hollywood idol
Douglas Fairbanks Jr., du Maurier’s daughter Daphne, and Beatrice
Lillie. Psychiatrist Lawrence Kubie would presumably have had afield day with the “real” Liza Elliott, noting her tendency to dressin austere, mannish clothes (save in her fantasy dreamworld), andputting her inability to “make up her mind” sexually and otherwise
down to Lawrence’s own troubled (it seems) childhood. There isalso something slightly manic about her support for the British (andlater, American) war effort, extending to driving around Cape Codin uniform in a station wagon equipped with Red Cross flags andbearing a stretcher for emergencies. Whether Hart and his collaborators wrote all this into the show, and whether the obvious connections were some manner of open secret (although some contemporary comment suggests that they were), Lawrence’s nightly
bumping and grinding of “The Saga of Jenny” seems to have been
somehow cathartic for her: in an unctuous epilogue that might better have been edited out, mcclung recounts Lawrence’s quiet returnfrom Los Angeles as “just a navy wife, hurrying to the Grand
Central station in New York to meet her husband, Lieut. Comdr.
Richard Aldrich” (quoting the Chicago Herald American, 21 July
1943). She had entered her own “safe” relationship and did notappear on stage again until 26 December 1945.
Other, lesser niggles are that mcclung gives fewer details than hemight of the show’s rewriting—perhaps he is saving them for his
critical edition of the show—and of how a musical that Lawrence
wanted to open at the Music Box Theatre (a more intimate spaceused for topical revues and sophisticated comedies, as Lawrence
may once have thought Lady in the Dark to be) turned into a mammoth extravaganza that required a cast of fifty-two plus fifteen
stagehands, and an unreasonable two days to set up the complicated revolving stages in any touring theater. The absence of detailedarchival references (to collections but not to their boxes, folders, orthe like) is a little tiresome. Le Coq d’or (the name of the restaurantused as the springboard for the deleted fourth dream sequence),
which mcclung rightly links (p. 49) to the Rimsky-Korsakov opera
in its popular (in New York) staging by dancers and mimes withsingers at the side, keeps returning in Broadway mythology: Kernreferred to it in 1933 as a model for a new type of musical drama
permitting psychological exploration, and Hammerstein made asimilar connection in his draft for the dream-ballet of Oklahoma!
However, pace mcclung (p. 160), this dream-ballet was never going
to be based on a circus theme (Agnes de Mille seems to have invented that story only in 1979). The melody of “Mack the Knife” does
not begin with major second followed by a minor third (p. 67) but
vice versa. And I suspect that the “flu” for which Lawrence wastreated nightly at the Doctor’s Hospital just prior to and during the
New York opening (p. 102) was yet another of that institution’s
famous euphemisms: when Lorenz Hart was periodically admitted
there for alcoholism, the diagnosis released to the public was“undulant fever.”
Scholars wanting fuller details on Lady in the Dark will stillneed to refer to mcclung’s doctoral dissertation “American Dreams:
Analyzing Moss Hart, Ira Gershwin, and Kurt Weill’s Lady in theDark” (University of Rochester, 1994): it is a pity that not more ofthis was included here. But the present book is a fine piece of workthat should help nudge studies of the Broadway musical in significant new directions by proving the benefits of careful attention tosources and contexts.
Tim Carter
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

Performances

the transmission of the Lehrstück features,
while musical matters took a back seat.
With a running time of about thirty minutes, the need for a companion piece wasoften filled by Brecht’s Neinsager, which
doesn’t have any music by Weill. Morerecent stagings have combined Jasager with
Taniko, with attention focused on the differences between original and adaptation.
Such was the case in a 1994 staging of
Jasager by the highly acclaimed Noh actor
and director, Hideo Kanze (who also
appeared in a repeat performance of the
double bill in 2000 in New York City).
The “Brecht tradition” was palpableeven in Tokyo’s latest production. With acast of professional singers, director
Masayoshi Kuriyama felt compelled tohave an actor explain the Brechtian view of
Jasager before the curtain, apparently
because he doubted that singers could convey the full sense of the piece, but also
because the text was sung in German. Noh
is a type of Gesamtkunstwerk (not to be confused with the Wagnerian kind), where
dancing, singing, and music were thoroughly integrated. But the jiutai—similar
to a Greek chorus—could be seen as an element of defamiliarization. Weill surely didn’t write music in the Noh style, but heresponded to the text’s structure and simplicity with a musical language that is veryclear and almost condensed in its expression.

Der Jasager
Tokyo Chamber Opera
New National Theater
12–14 January 200715

The production’s backdrop featured
landscapes drawn in ink. Eight singers
stood upstage like a Noh chorus; the three
students in the center wore white domino
half masks, while the principals wore nomasks at all. Kuriyama’s concept had thecharacters move only minimally, allowing
Noh elements to make their way back into
the European work. This produced a peculiar effect, as the singing voice itself became
the “main character.” Keiko Yoshiwara
sang the little boy; her highly refined,
chaste voice explored all nuances of thepart, even though Weill’s music is relatively austere. With little stage action, listeners
could focus on subtle harmonic shifts,
highly original ideas in the instrumentation, or slowly changing colors in the painted backdrops. Hiroshi Wakasugi conducted
the orchestra with a sure hand. All in all,the production was an intriguing and successful attempt to recast Der Jasager as amodern Noh opera. This approach wasprobably prompted by the evening’s second
work. Bekku, a student of Olivier
Messiaen, also based his opera on a Nohplay, and the audience had a chance to compare the two approaches, albeit by composers from vastly different cultural backgrounds working in different times.

Japan has seen several surges of interest inWestern classical music. Unlike previous
waves, the latest installment is not limited
to established “high culture” but has madestrong inroads into various subcultures,
where it enjoys considerable popularity.
The New National Theater, which opened
its doors almost ten years ago, is playing avital part in that trend by presenting contemporary operas and plays from outside
the traditional canon (be it Japanese orWestern). Although these works are a longway from entering the repertoire, it’s apromising start.
The production of Weill’s Jasager waspart of a double bill, presented with Sadao
Bekku’s new opera, Izutsu no Onna (The
Lady of Izutsu) during Tokyo’s Performing
Arts Festival in January. Though not officially billed as such, the performance actually marked the 75th anniversary of the Japanese premiereof Der Jasager. Klaus
Pringsheim, a student ofMahler (and twin brother ofKatia Mann, the Nobel laureate’s wife), conducted thework in July 1932. As a faculty member of Tokyo’s conservatory, Pringsheim had convinced officials, who routinely rejected opera productions
on the grounds of indecency,
to allow it to be staged. Since
Jasager featured no love story
and wore its educational
agenda on its sleeve, the censors accepted the work, all
the more because it was basedon a Japanese Noh play,
Taniko.
After the Second World
War, Brecht scholarship had
a decisive impact on the performance history of Jasager,
also in Japan. Production
teams and critics focused on The Boy prepares to be thrown into the valley as the jiutai (chorus) looks on. Photo: Hideo Nakajima

Misako Ohta
Kobe University

16

Performances
LoveMusik
Biltmore Theatre
New York City
Premiere: 3 May 2007
In Much Ado About Nothing a young
woman is advised by a wise older man,“Speak low if you speak love”—make yourflirting talk whispered, intimate, sexy.
Ogden Nash’s lyric to a Kurt Weill tune in
One Touch of Venus harmlessly changed“if ” into “when.” But an unknown personat the music publisher’s office inserted acomma before “love,” turning it into a
vocative endearment. Thus “speaking low”
no longer referred to love talk, but to adesideratum for femininity, as in Lear’s
eulogy for the dead Cordelia, “Her voice
was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent
thing in woman.”
By eliminating the erroneous comma
after “speak,” the musical LoveMusik, likethe book of letters on which it is based,
Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The
Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, puts
the sotto voce back where it is most apt,
into the words of love—on pillows, in letters, in love life.
The new musical, conceived by Harold
Prince, with book by Alfred Uhry andVolume 25, Number 1

music by Kurt Weill (culled from his extensive catalogue), was engendered by thathefty tome of correspondence, consummately translated and edited by Lys
Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke. It fell
into Prince’s hands, and that savvy man of
the theater passed it on to Alfred Uhry.
Thus came about, after a long gestation,
the wonderful musical that, as stated in the
program, was “suggested by the letters ofKurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.”
It concerns a love affair that, in and outof matrimony, remained unconventional.
There was a marriage, then a divorce of
convenience, and a remarriage. It was anopen marriage: Lenya’s infidelities weremany and brief, Weill’s much fewer and oneof them serious. Because of their far-flung
work, the spouses were often, sometimes
prolongedly, apart. This stimulated infidelities but also elicited fascinating letters.
Uhry’s libretto is only sparsely based on
actual quotations from them; more heavily
on the biographical information the editors
supply. As Uhry said in an interview, hislibretto catches “the temperature of the letters.”
The temperature or the volume (in thesense of loudness or lack of it) in the letters.
They bespeak a steady underlying love
often rambunctiously expressed, but they
do speak low. In Weill’s famous remark to
Lenya, quoted in the show, she came firstwith him—right after the music. That,
understandably, was not what she wanted
to hear. In a sense, Kurt was not enough for
Lenya, and she, threatening his concentration on composing, was too much for him.
But, in a deeper sense, Weill and Lenya’s

The rowboat: Weill (Michael Cerveris) and Lenya (Donna Murphy) on Peetzsee. Photo: Carol Rosegg

Kurt Weill Newsletter

low-speaking but enduring love suited bothof them.
There are two sets of expectations not
to be brought to LoveMusik. The first is the
expectation for a typical Broadway musical:
big production numbers, lots of dancing,elaborate costumes and scenery, and a bookprogressing steadily from scene to scene.
Instead, there is something more likethe Brecht-Weill “epic theater”: shortscenes connected not by pretty ribbons but
by jumps—or, if it were a movie, jump
cuts. This brevity and episodicity precludes sentimental dawdling, and keeps thetemperature from a boil. In other words, it
speaks low.
The second inappropriate expectation isto hear all your favorite Weill songs, or atleast the most famous ones. The 27 numbers included are more than a drop in theocean, 27 warm or cool waves from a greatsea of songs, almost every one a masterpiece. But even such a very popular song as“Pirate Jenny” is used only briefly as
underscoring. If a song does not fit thestory being told—Kurt and Lenya’s 26year relationship, from the 1924 meeting to
Weill’s death in 1950—it will not be
included.
Moreover—and this is one of the beauties of the musical—you may get the wellknown song in a surprising situation orfrom an unexpected mouth. Take “That’sHim,” which in One Touch of Venus wassung by a goddess acknowledging her mortal love, but here is delivered piteously by
Kurt trying to justify to himself one of
Lenya’s flings. “September Song,” inKnickerbocker Holiday an old man’s plea tohis young love, becomes a duet after Kurt’s
death for Lenya and her next husband andsuccessful promoter, the homosexual
George Davis. That was to become a marriage that spoke even lower. But it sang out
loud, as Davis steered Lenya into a splendid singing and acting career long delayed
and richly deserved.
The very opening number of
LoveMusik is telling. From a background of
darkness, a spotlight picks out Weill stage
right, singing “Speak Low.” Eventually,
Lenya, in a spotlight stage left, takes over,with the song’s end a tender duet. Sharing
the song denotes a kind of togetherness, yet
the distance between the singers remains—
symbol of a separateness for two.
There follows the 1924 scene where
Lenya, then a maid in the household of the
playwright Georg Kaiser, rowed across thePeetzsee to pick up Weill at the railway station and ferry him across to the Kaiser

Kurt Weill Newsletter

home for the young composer’s collaboration with the established dramatist. The
collaboration between man and woman in
the boat became even closer.
Alfred Uhry, in his book, had to inventa lot, but his inventions are always in character and believable. He has provided much
more than song cues: the very plausible
story of two sometimes prickly, sometimes
complaisant individuals, now rubbing eachother achingly wrong, now soothingly
smoothing out their differences.
Harold Prince is an expert director, andhe moves his actors around the intimate
stage of the Biltmore Theatre with savvy
evolved through long experience—including having directed Lenya in Cabaret. In
the pit is a ten-piece band playing the masterly orchestrations of Jonathan Tunick, for
piano (played by the able conductor,
Nicholas Archer), two often honeyed violins, a virile viola and cello, two sensuous
woodwinds, a sassy trumpet and sardonic
bass, plus drums and percussion. Theseorchestrations inject the leanness of Weill’s
own ones with a bit of Broadway
razzmatazz.
Beowulf Boritt’s scenery gleefully
espouses the Brechtian spirit: tongue-incheek caricatures that laughingly capture
the genius loci, and can handily changemoods. Prince had his designer create acommenting inner proscenium, in this casenude figures in erotic interplay that drolly
shame the less than orgiastic proceedings,
except for one brief moment when, in bed,
Lenya straddles the supine Kurt. The sex
here, you might say, speaks low like thelove.
There is a cast of ten whose minor
members often double, always adroitly. And
then there are the amazing principals.
Michael Cerveris has distinguishedhimself in several Sondheim musicals
among other roles, most recently that of
Kent to Kevin Kline’s Lear. His Kurt Weillis exultant one moment, wrenching thenext, but always finely calibrated for maximal effect with the most sparing means.
The slightest smile, a barely audible sigh,an aborted gesture—and something deep
within is magisterially conveyed. Quiet
understatement portrays passionate
immersion in music; a sweetly fragile
singing voice becomes heartrendingly frailer when imbued with Lenya-caused suffering. His spoken lines come out new-minted; his singing is as simple and straightforward as spoken dialogue.
Donna Murphy is one of our two or
three supreme singing actresses or acting

Volume 25, Number 1

Weill (Cerveris) and Brecht (David Pittu) are casting
Mahagonny Songspiel . Photo: Carol Rosegg

singers. Easefully she gets at Lenya’s
essence, at her less than beautiful but
enthralling attractiveness. In rebellion, she
is endearing; in compliance, ever so slightly bristling. German has a word for it, theuntranslatable herb—sharp or rough, yettasty, like dry wine. How drolly she spoutsslang, how variously she intones the nickname “Weillchen.” She sings superbly,
endowing pure tones with a little extra
savor, and she is as good at Lenya’s youthful, slightly squeaky soprano as at her later
smoky, around-the-block mezzo. Like
Cerveris’s, this is a performance as lived-in
as a pair of cherished slippers. Together,
these actors create with utter credibility theunlikely union of a proper middle-class
Jewish boy and a raunchy, lower-classlapsed Catholic.
Both of them deftly speak and sing invery pronounced German accents throughout, whether it is meant to be their native
German or their foreigners’ English. It
could be claimed that the accents should be
deployed only for America, but one can also
argue for unified continuity throughout.
Perhaps like horses, accents should not bechanged in midstream. In any case, farfrom producing a Brechtian alienation
effect, they are lovably involving.
David Pittu is a superbly mordant, arrogantly selfish, deliciously sarcastic, funnily
infuriating Brecht, down to the man’s visibly carious teeth and dirty fingernails, here
only sensed. He looks alarmingly like
Brecht, in a performance so real you can

17

almost smell it. Prince and Uhry give him asteady retinue of one wife and two mistresses, for musical and sexual backup.
Patricia Birch choreographs this ménage aquatre’s movements as drolly as she does
the rest of her witty choreography.
John Scherer portrays George Daviswith dignified aplomb, and the supporting
cast, which includes such major talents as
Judith Blazer and Ann Morrison (who also
understudies Lenya), is flawlessly flexible.
And throughout, there are subtly detailed
directorial and design touches, which one
discovers with growing pleasure.
But what, ultimately, matters most is
Weill’s music, which makes that of the best
current musicals seem like small, nay,
minuscule potatoes. LoveMusik, whose title
suggestively combines English andGerman, embodies the truth about Weill’smusic, which has been wrongly viewed as
breakable in halves, European andAmerican. Nonsense: Weill’s music speaks
only one fully international language,
adaptable to all ears, uplifting to all spirits,
as this show compellingly demonstrates.
Twelve fine but quite different lyricists—German, French, American—
proved equally perfect fits for these songs
that know no boundaries. Thus Maurice
Magre’s French lyrics for “Je ne t’aimepas” come across as strikingly in Michael
Feingold’s English translation as “I don’t
love you.” And what nationality is themusic of a thriller like “Surabaya
Johnny”—German, American, or Javanese?
Just as Weill could recycle his music fromsymphonic to popular or vice versa, theshow proves songs from any period or situation equally potent in other contexts orcontinents. Some of the pungent Brechtian
lyrics lose a little in translation (especiallywhen soft-pedaled by Marc Blitzstein), but
no matter. The music speaks—low or loud,sweet or bitter, syncopated or flowing—to
mind, heart, and gut.
A great Weill song with words by Walter
Mehring (not in the show) asks Wie langenoch—how much longer? That is the question LoveMusik raises. How will it survive
the mixed reviews, some good, someuncomprehending? Its staying power on
Broadway may be in question; but in one
way or another—in performance, on
hoped-for disc, or in memory—it should
be with us forever.
John Simon
New York City

18

Performances
Aufstieg und Fall der
Stadt Mahagonny
Los Angeles Opera
Premiere: 10 February 2007
In its mere twenty years of existence theLos Angeles Opera has now staged
Mahagonny twice: Jonathan Miller’s intellectualized (read: stylized, drab) 1989 version and now John Doyle’s somewhat-lessthan the above. It ran seven performances,from 10 February through 4 March, filling
approximately eighty percent of the 3000seat house every night, at a time (hurrah!)when Mahagonny revivals seem to be popping up across the land. The Mahagonny ofour (and Weill/Brecht’s) dreams may still
wait in the wings, but both the Los Angeles
performance and its general reception
merit celebration. Almost everybody I
know went twice.
Doyle’s stage mettle did not measure up
to his recent Broadway Sondheim triumphs with Sweeney Todd and Company;
perhaps crowd scenes aren’t yet his field ofhonor. The numbing final moments, withthe crowd hurling its challenges and theVolume 25, Number 1band picking up from where Mahler’s
Sixth left off, came off as numbing inanother sense—the stage a line of grayedout stick figures, James Conlon’s fineorchestra sort of abandoned.
Mark Bailey’s designs set the action
along a strip of U.S. 666, which is either theMark of the Antichrist in Revelations or ahighway out of Gallup, N.M. (works eitherway). Flashing neon, girlie ads, and heavy
traffic markers further suggest a proximity
to Las Vegas; later on, of course, the script
will call for a typhoon in the neighborhoodof Pensacola. (Said typhoon was left ablowing through the sound system during
intermission, one of Doyle’s less happy
directorial inventions.)
Other moments in the stage plan
seemed to demonstrate a mistrust of the
Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s generous
stage dimensions. The Trial Scene, forexample, in which hero Jimmy must faceblame for going broke, was set up as a TV
production, cramped in mid-stage with theface of Judge Trinity Moses (the excellent
Donnie Ray Albert) on a monitor. The
third-act “Love Scene,” similarly, with its
extraneous “Crane Duet” (when will theylearn to leave that out?) takes place on stage
right in a sort of pileup. Small moments inthe staging remain in the memory as simply
stupid; one, deplored by all critics and justabout everyone else I’ve spoken to, was theidea of handing over a folded-up flag toJenny after the execution of “her” Jimmy,
as if he were some kind of war hero.

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Yet this was a highly recognizable,
sometimes superb Mahagonny worth a visit
or two, even at the $220 top that glides past
without demurrer in Los Angeles theseevenings (mitigated by the fact that nobody
need dress on these balmy winter nights).
Among the principals I was let down onlyby the Begbick of Patti LuPone, who sangprettily but who I felt was wrongly cast—for reasons, I freely admit, having to dowith memories of the glorious harridan of
Astrid Varnay at the Met all those years ago.
That was Begbick, as LuPone in her Mae
West get-up was not. (Perhaps Doyleshould have let her keep her tuba from
Sweeney.) As compensation there was thesensational Jenny of Audra McDonald,than whom I never expect to see a better:every overtone of the pussycat and the tiger
perfectly in place, her rejection of Jimmy at
the end as shattering as anything opera canoffer.
Anthony Dean Griffey was Jimmy, herpatsy, his bright tenor nicely colored with atouch of the pathetic at the end. (His last
name was changed from the “Mahoney” ofMichael Feingold’s translation to the more
singable “McIntyre.”) John Easterlin consumed his fill of calf-flesh (and then some),
Steven Humes and Robert Wörle filled out
the lumberjack contingent.
Since this is James Conlon’s first year as
L.A. Opera’s music director, it may be becoincidence that Mahagonny was on theschedule as he arrived full of plans toembark the company on a long-term exploration of Germany’s music under the Nazi
shadow. Three days after the final
Mahagonny Conlon led the first of a series
he calls “Recovered Voices,” including
short selections from Jonny spielt auf, Dietote Stadt and other (and better) works ofthe time, plus a complete performance ofZemlinsky’s Florentine Tragedy. His enthusiasm for the repertory is matched by his
skill; it was not his doing that the great,
blistering moments of this Mahagonny did
not blister on stage as they did in the pit.
Alan Rich
Los Angeles

Trinity Moses (Donnie Ray Albert) and Alaska Wolf Joe (Steven Humes) square off in Act 2.
Photo: Robert Millard

Alan Rich is music critic of L.A. Weekly. His
most recent collection of critical writings is So
I’ve Heard (Amadeus Press).

Kurt Weill Newsletter

Volume 25, Number 1

19

Performances
Aufstieg und Fall der
Stadt Mahagonny
Opera Boston
Premiere: 23 February 2007
While Boston’s premiere opera company
has retreated to repeating the standards andeliminating modern or challenging operafrom its schedule, Opera Boston sold out
its entire run of Weill and Brecht’s Aufstieg
und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in late
February before a single review had
appeared.
The success of this production—audiences stood and cheered through multiple
curtain calls—can be credited to thestrength of Regietheater when intelligently
and imaginatively deployed. Director Sam
Helfrich and his design team, Caleb
Wertenbaker (set), Nancy Leary (costumes), and Christopher Ostrom (lighting)created a single, flexible, and utilitarian
environment that could have been an abandoned factory or the back of a truck stop in
the middle of nowhere. Flanked on stageleft by a row of three porta-potties, and onstage right by a dumpster, the main structure’s loading dock with its roll-up door
served as a dandy stage within a stage,
allowing the set to expand and contract easily as the action demanded.
This monochrome, dog-eared set suggested forcefully that the pleasures of
Mahagonny were largely illusions, something that one experienced and enjoyedbecause he had paid the seedy lady at thedoor a small fortune, and because he wanted so badly for it to be so. No wonder thatan innocent like Jimmy (here called
MacIntyre rather than Mahoney) could get
fleeced out of everything he had, including
his life. Program notes, by the way,
explained that the co-creators intended a
different list of character names for eachcountry in which their opera was to be performed.
Human values were few and far
between in this Mahagonny, no more sothan when the corpse of death-by-gluttony
victim Jack O’Brien was picked up dutifully and then unceremoniously tossed in thedumpster. Widow Begbick’s girls enter-

Begbick (Joyce Castle), Trinity Moses (Philip Lima), and Jenny (Amy Burton). Photo: Clive Grainger

tained their clients standing up in the
porta-potties, the better to get them in, out,
and make way for the next customer as
quickly as possible. The finale built toimmense power as the assembled cast andchorus advanced on the audience with the
awkward, vacant-eyed shuffle of the
doped-up and drugged-out.
What hit with the greatest impact was
the simple, brutal message that if you arewithout wealth, you are without power, status, even identity. Although the look of thisMahagonny was somewhat updated, little
manipulation was needed to connect
Brecht and Weill’s bitter thesis to conditions in contemporary America, where thegulf widens daily between rich and poorand thousands are turned out into thestreets by mortgage scams. The bodies were
dropped over the rim into the dumpsterone by one, without regard for basic
respect, let alone human compassion.
Conductor Gil Rose found a beauty andlyricism in Weill’s score that didn’t undermine its pungent harmonies and spiky
rhythms, but set them off to even greater
effect. Rose is the rock on which this company is based, having brought his Boston
Modern Orchestra Project into collaboration with Boston Academy of Music’s
endearing, thoroughly traditional andnotably inconsistent opera department.
The result has been an opera company notjust reinvigorated but reborn, one able toperform everything from bel canto to what
was written last week with equal virtuosity.
Casting, generally more than adequate
with this company, was luxurious and wellbalanced, the famous guests helping raise

the level of the local talent. Joyce Castle,
her mezzo atmospherically worn but
strongly insinuating, made for a deceptively seedy, almost grandmotherly Begbick as
the boys were lured in, and a toxic dictator
as they met their various fates at the handsof her gang. Amy Burton’s Jenny had thepolish and finesse of a high-class call girl,the tough-as-nails realism of a survivor
who’s been around. Vocally she lavished on
the score the kind of beauty and allure shebrings to her Mozart and Handel.
The men maintained the standard.
Most interesting was Daniel Snyder as
Jimmy. He traced a firm line and displayedsome real, unforced heldentenor strength
throughout his range. Appealingly young
and fresh, he was an unusually sympathetic
and tragic presence in the role.
Philip Lima was a black-voiced, dangerous Trinity Moses and Frank Kelley aslimy, pencil-thin Fatty the Bookkeeper—
his nickname clearly an inside joke among
the gang. Stephen Salters, Tom O’Toole,
Christian Figueroa and, in particular,
Matthew DiBattista as Jack O’Brien madesolid vocal and vivid dramatic contributions.
Opera Boston had a breakthrough experience two seasons ago with a luminous,
elegantly inventive production of Adams’s
Nixon in China. With Mahagonny, thecompany demonstrated clearly that thosehigh standards were not a fluke—this company has arrived.
William Fregosi
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

20
20

Performances
Judgment of Paris
Rambert Dance Company
Kurt Weill Fest Dessau
4 March 2007

Volume 25,
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Number 11

and costumes were originally designed by
Hugh Laing, one of the dancers—everything is filthy and run down. In the background sits a pianist, tinkling a few measures from the “Moritat,” followed by“Polly’s Lied.” The drowsy staff begins tostir at the entrance of a late visitor who has
already looked deeply into a glass. To allappearances, he is the perfect petit bourgeois embodiment of Paris. And now thethree graces, elevated to goddesses, begin
their show: Juno swishes her fan alluringly
and gyrates her prominent bottom, thefaux-blond Venus juggles three wooden
hoops, and Minerva handles her boa like a
flickering snake in front of the guest. Theygo through their well-worn music hall
steps, move very close to him and tease hislust, but duck his attempts to grab andgrope them. The waiter continually replenishes his glass until the guest finally hits thefloor, completely drunk, whereupon the

The programming officials of the Rambert
Dance Company were too easy on themselves in responding to an invitation fromthis year’s Kurt Weill Fest. A little more
Weill surely would not have hurt. Thankful
though we were for an encounter with
Judgment of Paris, Antony Tudor’s 1938
ballet choreographed to six piano numbers
from Dreigroschenoper, it wasa little lost between Merce
Cunningham’s enthralling
Pond Way (music by Brian
Eno) and two subsequent
pieces, Martin Joyce’s Divine
Influence (to the last movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata), and Michael
Clark’s Swamp (with music
by Bruce Gilbert), two works
flavored with a somewhat
stale off-the-rack modernism. I would have preferred a revival of Christopher Bruce’s ballet to
Berliner Requiem, which hecreated in 1982 for the Ballet
Rambert. And, to extend my Juno dances for Paris as the headwaiter looks on. Photo: Kai Bienert
wish list, it would have beenfour swoop down on him and relieve him of
nice to learn a few more details about thehis wallet, watch, and gold chain.
genesis of Judgment of Paris.
The whole story is fairly depressing.
It is a piece typical of the “dirty thirThe 30-year-old Tudor captured theties,” placed against the backdrop of theatmosphere and the characters with fineglobal feeling of resignation that preceded
strokes—sardonic and bitter, like a provinWorld War II. Little is known about thecial brothel of the day, with borrowings
world premiere. It appears to have takenfrom the variety shows of the outer borplace in June 1938 at London’s Westoughs, and lots of hip swaying and lasciviminster Theatre (possibly as a curtain-raisous come-hither gestures. But he neverer for Gogol’s comedy, The Marriage), andridicules his characters, rather coating
danced by an ad hoc ensemble composed ofthem with a worn, melancholy patina. It ismembers of the Ballet Rambert.
a ballet closely related to The Miraculous
The ballet is set in a dimly-lit, sleazy
Mandarin (though obviously without thenightclub, with a tired headwaiter andexpressionist zeal) and Kurt Jooss’s criticalthree belles de nuit, advanced in years, sitcommentaries in The Big City. Tudor’sting around a table and stretching theirchoreography shows a dancer’s touch andarthritic limbs. Midnight has long passed
follows the Weill pieces sensitively in theirand yawns provide the only movement inthreadbare piano reductions (we hear
the bleak atmosphere. Props, backdrops,

Kurt
KurtWeill
WeillNewsletter
Newsletter“Cannon Song,” “Jealousy Duet,”“Barbara Song,” “Pirate Jenny,” and thefinal measures of the “First Threepenny
Finale”).
At the world premiere, Tudor danced
the tipsy Paris, Hugh Laing the snobbish
headwaiter, and Agnes de Mille portrayed
Venus (five years later she would choreograph an entirely different Venus, Weill’s
One Touch of Venus). She later remarked:“Every gesture is a satire of some otherkind of bad dancing and I knew what
Antony was satirizing. I became [Isadora]
Duncan, or I became some other danceartist. With each one there was a bad odor.
And Antony’s performance was superb,
drunker and drunker and eyes glazing
with just a touch of lust that faded as helost his senses. He was a damn good actor.
They can’t do Judgment any longer. . . .
They can’t act, they don’t know how to do
comedy.”Her response to this performance by the Rambert
Dance Company—a revival
from 2005—in Dessau would
have been, alas, along thesame lines. The blame,
though, rests less with theperformers themselves, who
obviously enjoyed dancing to
the Weill tunes as they were
evoked by Stephen Lade on
the piano, than with whoever
cast dancers too young andhealthy to suggest the worldweariness of these sorry
characters. Thus Robin
Gladwin as Paris resembles anaive youngster rather than adrunken roué, while Hubert
Essakow as the blasé waiterseems to have been recruited from anagency that specializes in students whoneed to increase their meager incomes. I
wish, though, that Lenya were still aroundto coach the three prostitutes Mikaela
Polley (Minerva), Angela Towler (Venus)
and Gemma Wilkinson (Juno) in theircraft—beyond the proper execution of
their steps. Mind you, I can only hope tohave assigned each dancer her actual role,
for the program lists them only alphabetically, without specifying who dances whichcharacter.
Horst Koegler
Stuttgart

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KurtWeill
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Volume 14,
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Number11

Performances

Maiwald), who had been sitting with his
legs dangling into the orchestra pit, gets up
to sing the “Moritat von Mackie Messer.”
Then Macheath himself appears, pushes
the boy away, and finishes the song. At thevery end of the show this business isrepeated; Macheath gets the final word,
and the play has come full circle. Wolfram
Koch (Macheath) is a slick jack-of-alltrades, more rascal than monstrous criminal, who wiggles neatly out of every situation. His character, like all the others, isstripped of all larger-than-life pretensions.
Karin Neuhäuser becomes the audience’s
darling with her portrayal of Mrs. Peachum
as an alternate mousy and brassy but constantly boozed-up slut in a cheap negligee
and plush slippers (costumes: Mareike
Uhlig). One of her props neatly summarizes the playful ruptures of this staging: apillow that she always carries around—symbol of comfort in a hostile world—hasBrecht’s gutsy slogan embroidered on it:“Glotzt nicht so romantisch.” (Stop thatromantic gaping.)
The kid who sang “Moritat” could havedevised the sets: Adriane Westerbarkey’s
design divides the stage into several levels
and compartments, resembling a shabby
cardboard dollhouse, where the rooms arealways visible and populated (e.g., thewhores sprawl in front of and inside theircubicle throughout the play). Having actors
on stage while they are not participating in
the plot has an enlivening effect and opens
up possibilities for interaction. Yvon

Die Dreigroschenoper
Schauspiel Frankfurt
Premiere: 19 January 2007

2121

Jansen’s Jenny Diver, for instance, repeats
the last lines of Polly’s (Sascha Icks) “Seeräuberjenny” as if in a daze.
Such an imaginative staging of a song
reveals just how much the music drives
both the show and its characters. It is themore abstract of the two media that makeup the piece, and it is more responsive to anever-changing present than language, andin Wilms’s staging it seemed that the musiceven gained extra intensity. The switching
between book scenes and songs relied on
agility and swiftness, which also informed
the overall tone. But what was fun in thebook scenes turned earnest during thesinging. This was possible because the cast
did not disappoint musically despite varying singing skills (especially focused andprecise: Joachim Nimtz as Mr. Peachum).
The Ensemble Modern, supplemented bymembers of the Internationale Ensemble
Modern Akademie, gave superb musicalsupport. In the spirit of the staging’s lighttouch, the musicians donned circus-band
costumes, but the parallel ended rightthere. Led on alternate nights by Nacho de
Paz and Manuel Nawri, the Ensemble
Modern delivered a clean, clear, and crisp
sound. Compared to this invigorating performance, the Ensemble’s recording of
Dreigroschenoper released in 1999 appears
almost bland.

Strolling in front of Frankfurt’s Schauspielhaus shortly before curtain time for
Dreigroschenoper, one could hear musiccoming from the neighboring opera house,
where the performance had already begun.
Speakers transmitted Zemlinsky’s one-act
operas, A Florentine Tragedy and The
Dwarf, into the plaza. A neat coincidence,as the Austrian composer conducted thefirst staging in Berlin of Ausfstieg und Fall
der Stadt Mahagonny in 1931, prompting
Weill to rave, “Zemlinsky is simply outstanding!!!” But in terms of their compositions, the two artists were worlds apart.
Zemlinsky’s sumptuous, refined, and insinuating sounds, and the fin-de-siècle themesof these works (based on Oscar Wilde)
seem to represent the very type of opera
that Weill and Brecht sought to rough up. It
is hard to believe that only six years separate the world premieres of Dwarf (1922)
Gisela Maria Schubertand Dreigroschenoper (1928). If Frankfurt
Frankfurt am Main
had decided to combine the works in one
bill, one would have realized instantly the enormous provocationthat Dreigroschenoper must havecaused back in the day.
Some eighty years later, Dreigroschenoper is no longer provocativein the same way, and contemporary
stagings are exploring new qualities.
The sparse program notes quoted
from the “Anstatt-dass-Song”:“Instead of / They do somethingthat has purpose and a goal / They
prefer fun / After which of course
they end up in the hole.” The funprovided by André Wilms’s staging
had, of course, a purpose and a goal:transmitting the work’s insights in a
playful, offhand way, not bogged
down in leaden ideology. Tiny
human silhouettes dance across thecurtain during the overture and set
the pace and tone for this staging,which zips right through without anintermission. On the heels of theoverture, a little boy (Jonas Polly (Sascha Icks) and Macheath (Wolfram Koch) celebrate their wedding. Photo: Alexander Paul Englert22
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Number 11

to sing from. This solved one problem atleast; with the four male singers out of theway, the stage was clear for the dancers.
Tuckett was fortunate to have as his
dancing Anna one of the Royal Ballet’s
greatest ballerinas of today, Zenaida
Yanowsky. Her sinuous movements, with
spectacularly elastic extensions, and brilliant, often touchingly fragile pointe work,
made this Anna especially vulnerable andlovable. Her other half was sung by Martha
Wainwright, a folksinger famous for analbum entitled Bloody Mother Fucking
Asshole. Her voice is attractive and light,
with a slight catch in it. Although she sang
the transposed version of the score, she is
not a growler like Marianne Faithfull or
Gisela May, so at least this Anna sounded
youthful. She and Yanowsky are exactly thesame height and build, so they made totally convincing sisters.
The family was sung by Roderick Earle,
Paul Goodwin-Groen, Philip O’Brien, andKurt
KurtWeill
WeillNewsletter
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follow the instructions of the Stripper(Marianela Nuñez). During “Gluttony”
she was taking part in a porn movie, which
was being photographed by Fernando(Edward Watson), with whom she then falls
Die sieben Todsünden
in love, during the heart of the work,“Lust,” which Weill composed in an amazing flight of inspiration. Elsewhere,
Royal Opera House
Tuckett sometimes tried to introduce too
Londonmany ideas, with over-detailed action.
Here, though, the pas-de-quatre made its
mark, as the two Annas danced with
26 April – 9 May 2007
Fernando—Edward Watson’s sensitive,
almost fragile good looks made a great conThe Seven Deadly Sins is the only one of
trast with the fiery masculinity of Eric
Weill’s works so far to have been performed
Underwood as Edward. As Wainwrighton the main stage of the Royal Opera
cradled Watson in her arms, once Anna II
House. In 1973, Kenneth MacMillan’s verwas lost to him, all the movements camesion for the Royal Ballet was given as part
together to spell out the heartbreak.
of a triple bill, with Georgia Brown andIn “Envy,” Anna was dressed in furs
Annie Ross alternating as the singing Anna,
and spangles to attend a movie premiere—and Jennifer Penney as her dancing alterby the finale she had lost all dignity andego. It was not particularly well-received,
self-esteem, as, almost naked, she was given
and did not stay in the reperback the trench coat.
tory for long. (MacMillan’s
Yanowsky’s wonderful barechoreography had first beenfoot retreat, as the family
seen back in 1961, at theadvanced on her, brought out
Edinburgh Festival, when
the full level of regret.
Lotte Lenya had been conTuckett is a very talented
tracted to sing, but once shechoreographer and man ofsaw his plans, she withdrew,
the theater, but this version
and Cleo Laine replaced her.)of Die sieben Todsünden was
Although it has become
successful only in part. It
one of Weill’s most frequentwould work much better inly performed and recorded
thesmaller
Lindburyworks, the ballet-chanté poses
Theatre at the Royal Opera
greater problems in its way
House, where it would not bethan many of Weill’s largernecessary to mike the singers.
scale works. The balance
I cannot have been the only
between singers and orchesmember of the audience to be
tra is difficult to achieve,
bewildered by the contrast
with or without amplifica- Anna II (Zenaida Yanowsky) and Anna I (Martha Wainwright). Photo: Bill Cooper
between this inadequately
tion, if the stage is to be used
amplified staging and theto its full effect for dance. If it were perwork that followed it—Schoenberg’s
Christopher Steele. They were placed tooformed in the original German, for an
Pierrot Lunaire declaimed in Sprechgesang
far back much of the time for their words toEnglish-speaking audience, nowadays peofrom the orchestra pit by Linda Hirst,
be easily audible, but for “Gluttony” they
ple would expect surtitles. This, though,while Glen Tetley’s ballet was danced onwere allowed to descend from their perchwould distract attention away from the ultistage. No words for this were provided inon high, and it became the musical highmately more important (in ballet terms)
the program, although Auden andpoint of the performance. Martin Yatesvisual element.
Kallman’s translation of Brecht’s text was
conducted and achieved a good balanceWill Tuckett, the choreographer
printed in full (as it had been in 1973). Isn’t
between urging the music forward andentrusted with making this new adaptation,
it time the New York City Ballet revived
showing consideration for the dancers.
decided to move the action forward in time
Balanchine’s 1958 choreography—does it
Tuckett imposed some extra elements
to the 1960s. Thus the two Annas werestill exist?—or aren’t there enough people
on the story, with a character called Mr Big
identically kitted out in miniskirts, beehive
still around to recreate it?
(danced by Christopher Saunders), whohairstyles, and instead of being enveloped
negotiates the transactions, first of all sellin a single cloak at the start, they wore styling Anna to a sleazy Motel Man (JoséPatrick O’Connor
ish knee-length trench coats. The set by
Martín), then a Strip-Club Owner (Thiago
LondonLez Brotherston was a three-sided iron
Soares), and then a Film Director (Garystructure, the upper balcony of whichAvis). In “Sloth,” Anna was repeatedly
served as a platform for the family quartet
assaulted, and in “Pride” she was forced to

Performances

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Recordings
Happy End
American Conservatory Theater
Constantine Kitsopolous, conductor

Ghostlight Records 7915584418-2
Weill’s and Brecht’s 1929 attempt at a follow-up hit to Die Dreigroschenoper has suffered over the years at the hands of academics, though continuing to win over audiences. The script (primarily by Elisabeth
Hauptmann), while a cobbled-together
mishmash of incidents, comic business andcartoon characters, can be made to workwith smart editing and quick-footed direction; but the songs show composer and lyricist at the peak of their form.
My hopes were high for this first
English-language version, but alas, after
listening with open ears, I can only concurwith the sentiments sounded and implied
so deftly, hauntingly, and ironically by
Brecht and Weill throughout the piece—
nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. Take theshow’s keynote number, “The Bilbao
Song.” In this version, it comes over as arather hectoring, four-square, and, yes,charmless account of ambivalent past joys.
Surely, if directors and performers are to
tackle the work, they should start from anawareness of Weill’s and Brecht’s sense of
the enduring efficacy of Villon’s “Où sontles neiges d’antan?” (Where are the snowsof yesteryear?). Their collaboration could,
at times, almost be reviewed as variations
on “no time like the past,” even “nostalgia
for nostalgia.”
This has little to do with pat sentimentality, and everything to do with re-evoking
the smell, the feel, and the dubious attractions of, inter alia, the years in India(Macheath and Brown), the (problematic)
times so very far away (Macheath andJenny), the sense that it was “nice while itlasted” (Polly), the world of Bills Ballhaus
in Bilbao (translated here, for dubious alliterative reasons, and ultimately incomprehensibly, as “beerhall.”)In this version of the number, there’s notime for reflection between verse and chorus, no suggestion that the performers are
actually working with Brecht’s images andWeill’s notes to paint the scene for the lis-

Volume 14,
25,Number
Number11

tener. It’s music theater by numbers, withthe second and third verses in particularutterly devoid of their crucial ambiguous
charm.
But maybe I’m being ungracious. Afterall, as Michael Feingold’s translation tells
us, “It was fantastic—beyond belief.”
Without wishing to sound pedantic, let mesuggest that this crassly contemporary
piece of adolescent argot could not be moreinappropriate and more unsingable thanthe original. Listen to the singers squeeze
out “bee . . . leef,” how they force the “a”
not once but twice in “fantastic.” Just aquick attempt at an alternative comes up
with “I’m not so sure what you’d havethought all that was worth | But: it was thegreatest place/show on earth.” Not perfect, but much easier to sing and much better at conjuring up the lost world.
To continue with translation solecisms:
I lost count of the number of clumsy renditions of text and image, let alone fatal misunderstandings of register (linguistic, notvocal). When, in “Surabaya-Johnny,”
Lillian sings, “You thought nothing I did
was right,” she sounds like a querulous
housewife from some bad soap opera,
whereas Brecht’s original is tougher andmore direct. And the very opening line, “I
had just turned sixteen that season,” issurely unfortunate, with its hint of regulartimes of, perhaps, rural fertility or comingout dances. Brecht’s lapidary and matterof-fact statement deserves better than that.

23
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On the other hand, “The Mandalay
Song” gets a rip-roaring rendition, up to
speed and full of character. Charlotte
Cohn’s account of Lillian’s anthem,“Lieutenants of the Lord,” is as good areading of this awkward number as one
might hear, and the various choruses for
the Salvation Army fold come over withneatly gauged ironic authenticity.
The band is tight, mostly attentive tothe shifts in style (though I missed the
Hawaiian guitar in “Surabaya-Johnny”),
but sometimes hampered by curious tempi.
“The Sailors’ Tango” is surely far too
brisk, suggesting that Lillian might beabout to take a jet-boat to Burma; the harmonium in “The Brandy Dealer’s Dream”
bounces, rather than wheezes, along; andWeill’s hallmark trudge bass that opens“Surabaya-Johnny” sounds here more suited to a dead march, suggesting the singer
dragging a coffin of expired illusions
behind her. Lenya never sang it like a dirge,
so why do so many singers today persist in
signing the song’s outcome from the opening bars? It’s a song about a series of physical journeys and one emotional one, with abeginning, a middle, and an end.
Straightforward, perhaps, but for too many
it remains, in Brecht’s words, “dasEinfache, das schwer zu machen ist” (thesimplicity that is so hard to do).
Michael Morley
The Flinders University of South Australia

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ORDER FORM
The Foundation has a limited number of the following books for sale. All books will be shipped by U.S. mail in the United States and by surface rate to Europe.
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Title
Books
Weill. Briefwechsel mit der Universal Edition. Metzler, 2002.
Weill. Gesammelte Schriften. Schott, 2000.
Farneth/Juchem/Stein. KW: A Life in Pictures. Overlook, 2000.
Farneth/Juchem/Stein. KW: Ein Leben in Bildern. Ullstein, 2000.
Speak Low: The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. California, 1996.
Weill/Lenya. Sprich leise, wenn du Liebe sagst. Kiepenheuer, 1998.
Juchem. KW und Maxwell Anderson, Metzler, 2000.
Weill. Briefe an die Familie, Metzler, 2001.
Geuen. Von der Zeitoper zur Broadway Opera. Argus, 1997.
Drew. Kurt Weill: A Handbook. Faber, 1987.
Farneth, ed. Lenya the Legend. Overlook, 1998.
Kowalke, ed. A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill. Yale, 1986.
Kowalke and Edler. A Stranger Here Myself [essays] Olms Verlag, 1993.
Schebera. Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life. Yale, 1995.
Schebera. Kurt Weill. Rowohlt, 2000. [in German]
Taylor. Kurt Weill: Composer in a Divided World. Northeastern, 1991.
Kortländer, ed. Vom Kurfürstendamm zum Broadway. Dröste, 1990.
A Guide to the Weill-Lenya Research Center.
Kurt Weill: A Guide to His Works. 3rd ed.
Music
Down in the Valley. Piano-vocal score. Schirmer.
Four Walt Whitman Songs. Piano-vocal score. EAMC.
Lady in the Dark. Piano-vocal score. Chappell.
Lost in the Stars. Piano-vocal score. Chappell.
One Touch of Venus. Piano-vocal score (selections). TRO.
Street Scene. Piano-vocal score. Chappell.
The Threepenny Opera. Critical edition, piano-vocal score. EAMC.
The Threepenny Opera. Songs; Blitzstein. Warner.
Sechs Songs aus der Dreigroschenoper. Arr. Marino Formenti. UE.
Unknown Kurt Weill. For voice and piano. EAMC.

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