Kurt Weill Edition, Ser. I, Vol. 3 Mahagonny Songspiel INTRODUCTION by Giselher Schubert This volume presents, for the first time in full score, a work whose signif- least since the premiere of Trommeln in der Nacht, which opened at the icance in the oeuvre and artistic evolution of Kurt Weill can scarcely be Munich Kammerspiele on 29 September 1922 and received a trailblazing overstated: Mahagonny. Ein Songspiel. This first collaboration between review from Herbert Jhering in the Berliner Börsen-Courier on 5 October.3 Weill and Bertolt Brecht would achieve epochal importance in the genre Thereafter he attracted attention repeatedly with spectacular and often of opera (and music theater in general); it led Weill to form his signature scandalous performances or provocative comments in the daily press. Later “Song style,” which would exercise a stylistically formative impact on the Weill took to the pages of Der deutsche Rundfunk again (though he was re- music of the Weimar Republic; it brought about a musical breakthrough sponsible mainly for its musical commentary) with an advance announce- for Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenja (or Lenya, the name she adopted in the United ment (13 March 1927) followed by an almost euphoric review (27 March States, and the one used below), whose performance inaugurated a new 1927) of a broadcast of Brecht’s “comedy” Mann ist Mann, adapted by the species of singer-actor; and it represents Brecht’s debut as a stage director author himself as a “Sendespiel” (radio play). Here we read: “To get straight in the domain of musical theater.1 Yet the questions and difficulties raised to the point: this radio performance of Brecht’s comedy Mann ist Mann far by the versions of the Songspiel, their identification and source transmis- surpasses in immediate and lasting impact all that Berlin Radio has un- sion, and the work’s close ties with the opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt dertaken in this area.”4 Mahagonny remain largely unresolved. The version found in Weill’s holo- It was in these weeks of March 1927 that Weill first attempted to es- graph score (Fh) differs from the one premiered in Baden-Baden in 1927. tablish direct contact with Brecht, who, since September 1924, had worked However, the version of the premiere, including its scenario, can be re- in Berlin as a dramaturg at the Deutsches Theater and had managed to as- constructed with the aid of non-holograph inscriptions entered with var- semble a circle of friends and collaborators (including Elisabeth Haupt- ious writing implements both in the holograph score (Fh) and in a mann, who joined him in November 1924).5 Weill, having achieved a piano-vocal score prepared after the premiere (Vm). The first layer of this rousing success with his one-act opera Der Protagonist on a libretto by piano-vocal score transmits a version—apparently reflecting the composer’s Georg Kaiser (premiered in Dresden in 1926), and having just witnessed wishes—which differs from that of the holograph score (Fh) and the ver- the premieres of his Der neue Orpheus and Royal Palace at the Berlin Staats- sion heard at the premiere. oper on 2 March 1927 (his twenty-seventh birthday, as it happened), was Because the Songspiel had not established itself when Weill began work invited to submit a stage work to the German Chamber Music Festival in on the opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, he appears to have rel- Baden-Baden, scheduled to take place in summer 1927.6 The new work egated the Songspiel to the status of a “test” for the nascent opera. How- was subject to certain stipulations, later outlined by Heinrich Burkard in ever, he allowed the Songspiel to be expanded with the addition of four the event’s program booklet: “The guiding thought for the commission numbers from the opera for a Paris performance in 1932, which was re- was: Retreat from grand ‘opera’ with its giant apparatus, and the creation peated in the following year in Paris, London, and Rome. If the Songspiel of a stage work with only a small cast, with music that is pure chamber was thus expanded, the opera was, conversely, abridged for performances music in scale and treatment, and with minimal scenery.”7 This prestigious in Berlin (1931) and Vienna (1932). Such alterations were not, however, invitation, first mentioned indirectly in his correspondence on 15 March coordinated with a common goal in mind. In 1949, without contacting 1927, confirms that his contemporaries held a high opinion of Weill’s Weill or obtaining his permission, the dramaturg and stage director Hans music.8 He reacted favorably, and on 23 March 1927, he elaborated plans Curjel prepared yet another version of the Songspiel with still further al- for the piece in a letter to his Viennese publisher, Universal Edition (here- terations for a performance in Venice. This version was meant to supersede after UE): “I will not write a short opera for Baden-Baden, as I already both the Songspiel and the opera, the performance material of which was have enough one-acters. My plan is to extract part of a classical tragedy then thought to have been completely destroyed by the Gestapo. Curjel’s (Antigone, Lear, or the like) and turn it into a short vocal scene of no more conflation was withdrawn in 1957. Not until 1963 was it possible to per- than ten minutes’ duration.”9 form the Songspiel in a version close to its original form, though it incor- One day later, on 24 March 1927, he wrote to Lenya: “Baden-Baden porated parts of the above-mentioned versions and added annotations that is pressing me about the one-act opera. Now I have to go see B.”10 If more properly belong to the opera. In sum, the Songspiel and the opera, “B” should actually stand for Brecht, as seems prima facie the case, the use though closely interrelated in both genesis and content, are poles apart in of this abbreviation presupposes that Weill had previously discussed the historical and aesthetic importance. matter with Lenya, who—as a former member of the Georg Kaiser house- hold—was surely familiar with Brecht’s name. And as Brecht himself had I. Weill and Brecht: Initial Contacts already successfully adapted a “classic” with his Leben Eduards des Zweiten von England, drawing on Marlowe’s Edward II, Weill may well have pro- Judging from the available evidence, Weill initiated the collaboration with posed his plan to compose “a short vocal scene” from a “classical tragedy.” Brecht. In April or May 1925 Weill witnessed, for the first time, an ap- Brecht, who had previously been asked to collaborate by other composers, pearance by Brecht and Carl Zuckmayer in Berlin’s Novembergruppe and appears to have put off replying; in any case, “B” never again crops up in wrote an account of it for the periodical Der deutsche Rundfunk: “Though Weill’s subsequent correspondence.11 Nor did Weill pursue the plan to the importance of Brecht and Zuckmayer lies more in the theater, their compose a “short vocal scene”; instead, on 4 April 1927, he told his pub- readings display them in all their individuality and the full range of their lisher of a plan to write “a grand tragic opera”— a plan which he is un- language and ideas.”2 Weill’s article already demonstrates a certain famil- likely to have discussed with Brecht and soon dropped entirely.12 (It is iarity with the works of Brecht, who had ranked as a preeminent talent at obviously unrelated to the project of submitting a stage work for Baden- 14 Baden.) On the other hand, Brecht may well have mentioned his own op- Further, five “Mahagonnygesänge” from this draft piece had already been eratic scheme, noted in his journal as early as July 1924 (“Plans: [. .] published in the Hauspostille (Propyläen-Verlag, 1926). The result of this Mahagonny opera”).13 He may also have alerted Weill to the “Mahagon- conversation was the Songspiel Mahagonny, composed in March 1927, which was then performed at the music festival in Baden-Baden in sum- nygesänge” (with his own musical “settings”) in his Hauspostille (Domes- mer 1927.21 tic Breviary). Weill could not have been aware of them, since they were not due to appear in print until several weeks later.14 As the first meeting Indeed, there actually exists a “theatrical draft” by Brecht with the above- with Brecht (assuming that it actually took place on Thursday, 24 March mentioned title, Auf nach Mahagonny!!, as well as a number of fragmentary 1927) evidently produced no tangible results, Weill seems to have lost his scenes or poems that may well relate to the Mahagonny theme.22 But they desire to write a piece for the Baden-Baden festival. However, he kept his cannot be precisely dated, and there are no known draft musical settings final decision open, perhaps to await the publication of the Hauspostille. As by Weill of these fragments, which found their way neither into the he wrote to his father on 7 April 1927: “Whether I will do anything for Songspiel nor the opera. Moreover, as already mentioned, the Hauspostille Baden-Baden will be decided in the next few days. I’m not very keen about did not appear in print until late April 1927, with three items specifically it because I want to begin tackling the new opera as soon as possible.”15 In referred to as “Mahagonnygesänge.”23 Nor did the Songspiel originate in fact, Weill actually did first start work on the new opera with Kaiser, Der March 1927: Weill did not begin it until May of that year.