The Silver Lake Program Note

BBC PROMS 96

Kurt Weill ( 1900-50) n the present version of The Silver Lake, the essence of Georg Kaiser's long and complex The Silver Lake - A Winter's I play is preserved in the form of spoken Fairy Tale (1932) narratives (written by Jeremy Sams) and acted monologues and dialogues from the play itself. Together, these frame and link the performance of the complete musical score. Olim Peter Sidhom baritone An outline of the plot concludes the following Severin Heinz Kruse tenor sequence of brief programme notes, each of Frau von Luber Helga Dernesch mezzo-soprano which is self-standing and is headed accordingly. Fennimore Juanita Lascarro soprano The order of reading is therefore a matter of Baron Laur Heinz Zednik tenor individual choice and convenience - though the Lottery Agent Graham Clark tenor first note and last may perhaps be regarded as First Shopgirl Catrin Wyn-Davies soprano basic. Second Shopgirl Katarina Karneus mezzo-soprano First Gravedigger Paul Whelan baritone Second Gravedigger Gidon Saks boss-baritone Origins First Youth Stephen Alder boss Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake) was written and Second Youth Andrew Weale boss composed in Berlin during the second half of Philip Franks 1932, and first performed in Leipzig (and Maria Friedman simultaneously in Magdeburg and Erfurt) on 18 Hugh Ross February 1933 - nineteen days after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, and nine nights before the so-called Weimar Republic and its democratic experiment were consumed in the flames that engulfed the German parliament building (the Reichstag). Der Silbersee was the last musical score by Weill and the last play by Georg Kaiser to be heard or staged in their native Germany until the defeat of Hitler, and also the last to have had its world premiere there during either of their lifetimes. Programme note Not for another fifty-seven years could the © David Drew BBC PROMS 96

theatres and opera houses of Leipzig, Erfurt and company in Altona was planning to stage Weill 's Magdeburg freely determine their own repertories most recent work, the three-act opera Die according to their own needs and convictions; and Biirgschaft ('The Pledge', or 'The Surety'). never again, perhaps, would Leipzig audiences - Together with his friend Caspar N eher- librettist among them, in 1933, Weill's mother and father - of Die Biirgscluift and designer of Der Silbersee ­ include numerous representatives of a large, Weill visited Altona during the early winter of prosperous, and culturally influential Jewish 1932- 3. While he was there he witnessed the community. plight of the homeless unemployed, and could compare it w ith that of their Berlin comrades Snapshots: Germany 1929-32 who had built themselves rough huts by the banks of the lake close to Kaiser's home in the suburb of Of all European countries, Germany was the Griinheide - the lake across which (as legend has worst hit by the Wall Street crash of 1929. By it) Weill in 1924 had first rowed the still unknown 1931 Germany's unemployed numbered over five actress and dancer who in her final manifestation million; a year later, another million had joined as his loyal widow Lotte Lenya would enliven their ranks. Already in 193 1 the fli ght of capital, many a television chat-show with the tale of that coupled with the withdrawal of foreign credits, crossing. By 1932 Lenya and Weill had formally had led to panic on the Stock Exchange and a separated, and a year later they were divorced (to spate of bankruptcies. The effect on a 'welfare remarry in 1937). state' fuelled by American capital - as free­ marketeers are nowadays tending rather stridently Reception to point out - was crippling. Anticipating our own times, Franz von Papen 's Centre-Right The Leipzig premiere in February 1933 was given government sharply reduced social security in the same venerable theatre and opera house benefits during the severe winter of 1931-2. that had been Lortzing's base in the 1830s and a Homelessness and hunger became widespread. In major Wagner centre in the 1870s. Ethel Smyth's July 1932 -just after the N azis had doubled their The Wreckers had had its world premiere there in strength in the R eichstag electi ons, and just 1906, Krenek's ] onny spielt auf twenty-one years before Weill and Kaiser began work on Der later, and - riotously - Weill's and Brecht's Rise Silbersee- a bloody battle between N azis and and Fall if the City if Mahagonny in 1930. The Communists in the Hamburg port of Altona conductor of the Leipzig Silbersee - as of the was soon joined by their common enemy, the Krenek and of Mahagonny - was Gustav Brecher; Socialists. the director was D etlef Sierck (remembered today M eanwhile the courageous and youthful opera as the cult film director Douglas Sirk) . BBC PROMS 96

T he premiere was reviewed not only by the the international or the specialist press. A voice­ Leipzig press but also by the leading music and and-piano score and a small album of the more drama critics from Berlin and Frankfurt. What popular numbers had been published in time H ans R othe was later to call 'the last day of for the premiere, but were not advertised or the greatest decade of German culture in the promoted after M arch 1933. It was in the third twentieth century' had seemed to be an week of M arch that Weill fl ed from Berlin to unqualified success, and only the N azi and the Paris - never to return. M oscow-line Communist press took exception Five years aft er his death, Berlin 's first to it. N either in Leipzig nor in M agdeburg­ production of Der Silbersee - and the first Kaiser's native city - were there any hostil e anywhere since 1933 - was given in a theatre too demonstrations on the first night. But in small to house an orchestra. It was not until the M agdeburg on the second night the thugs went 1971 H olland Festival that Weill's score was heard to work, and within hours, all three Si lb ersee again in its original form, interspersed - as today productions were doomed. Brecher was soon to - with narrations and dialogue. The British be hounded fro m his post; and rehearsals already premiere of the complete work was mounted by in progress for a highly prestigious Berlin the Camden Festival in 1987. premiere at M ax R einhardt's D eutsches Theater - with a prominent N azi sympathiser in the role Georg Kaiser (1878-1945) of Olim - were abruptly terminated. Kaiser is a major fi gure in the history of German It would be misleading to suggest that theatre, and one who had some influence on the Der Silbersee was formally banned. In the Russian, British and American theatre of his time circumstances no ban was needed: within days - chiefl y through his Expressionist 'station- of the N azi seizure of power, a producti on in dranu' From Morn ing to Midnight. Eclipsed as he Germany was inconceivable. Administrators, now is, he remains an essential link between the conductors and directors who might have generation of Gerhart Hauptmann and Frank favoured one had either lost their positions, Wedekind and that of Brecht. In the 1920s Brecht fl ed abroad, or been incarcerated; unless, of was a fre quent visitor to the Kaisers' fa mily home course, they had already teamed up with the on the outskirts of Berlin; and like Weill he was new authorities. accustomed to address the playwright and his wife as if they were his foster-parents. Later and Subsequent performances with more irony he would write of 'the grea t Because of the political upheavals of the time, gentleman Kaiser' - which was indeed one of little or no news of the Silbersee premiere reached Kaiser's favo urite roles . BBC PROMS 96

A consciously post-Christian didactic moralist The Weill of The Silver Lake is rooted in a whose affinities with Bernard Shaw were disguised tradition of musical theatre that went back to the by the studied artificiality of his Expressionist Mozart of The Magic Flute, via Weber, Albert diction and the modernist constructivism of his Lortzing and Wenzel Mi.ill er. H e was also and dramaturgy, Kaiser won overnight fame and equally indebted to the alternative tradition that notoriety towards the end of the First World War had fostered precarious marriages between high with his pacifist drama The Bu rghers if Calais. drama and musical scores too extensive and Although - like the young Brecht - he was powerful to be considered incidental. There again, briefl y involved in the revolutionary politics of M ozart was a model - the Mozart of Thamos, post-1 918 Bavaria, his hatred of militarism and his King if Egypt. profound mistrust (or misunderstanding, as the Kaiser for his part was something of a 1990s would have it) of capitalism were tempered Wagnerite - again, perhaps, in Shaw 's sense - but by a commitment to Tolstoya n non-violence. one w ho was by no means averse to the rough With little use for M arx and none at all for Stalin, and tumble of the commercial thea tre. Incapable Mussolini, or Hitler, Kaiser was a solitary and of writing a mere potboiler but happy to set up reclusive fi gure long before the N azis forced hjm a stall in the market place from time to time, he into 'inner exile'. Escaping to Switzerland in foll owed the latest Berlin R evues much as he 1938, he died there seven years later, all but followed his fa vourite fo otball tea m - avidly, forgotten. cooll y, mathematically. Kaiser's Silver Lake is not a play 'with' music, Genre as Brecht and Elisa beth H auptmann's adaptation of The BeMa r's Opera was intended to be before Like Th e Threepenn y Opera but much more Weill made a Threepenny Opera of it; it was demandingly, The Silver Lake presupposes a cast essentially a play 'for' music - so mething that of 'singing actors'. Although it is likewise not an becomes vividly cl ear almost as soon as the prosa ic opera in the strict sense, it is audibly the work and ponderous Olim breaks the sil ence he had of a composer with opera projects still at the magisteriall y preserved throughout the opening forefront of his mind. D es pite and because of scene, and alone in the local poli ce stati on, begins rapidly diminishing opportunities for them in his bureaucrati c monologue. One of the great Germany, Th e Silver Lake takes for granted the full passages in twentieth-century music theatre, the resources of the sa me richl y subsidised thea tre and police-stati on scene was only conceiva ble through opera system in w hich Richard Strauss and M ax a true partnership of composer and playwright. R einhardt had long been luxuriating. BBC PROMS 96

The Music extends directly from the post-Verdian operatic preoccupations of Die Bu rgschafi and its In 1933 neither Weill, his public, nor his critics predecessors; and the third is part of his needed any programme notes about the style, inheritance, via his teacher Busoni, from the language or 'intentions' of his Silbersee music. masonic rites of M ozart. Today, when that style and language are even These may seem to be academic matters, yet more remote from contemporary art-musics and they are more than that. As we approach the end popular-musics than they once were from of our century and ofWeill's too, the 'Wheel of Stravinsky or Spoliansky, Hindemith or H ollander, Time' w hose revolutions are the subject of 'The the musical world seems to know a lot more Fool's Paradise' duet in The Si/ IJer Lake, is pressing about Weill and his intentions than Weill himself harder and moving faster than ever. The old could possibly have kn own at the time. question of what has already been irretrievably There is , for instance, the key fact - of which crushed by it, and how much is about to be, has he could not have had the slightest inkling - that acquired a new urgency. aft er Der Silbersee his next work would be The SeiJen Deadly Sins, and that it would be written in Paris. Another unforeseeable and closely related fact was that the Symphony w hose first movement he had drafted in January 1933 in Berlin - shortly before the Silbersee premieres - would not be finished for another year, and would wait nearly forty years for its official German premiere. And ye t it is arguable that today's listeners to the Sil iJer Lake music should envy and try to emulate the relative innocence of their predecessors sixty-three years ago. If any foreknowledge is likely to help them, it is the simple observa ti on that from whatever directi on we choose to approach it, the unity of the music has three compacted layers. The first is Weill's highly personal transformation of popular so ng and dance idioms, whether of his own day or from as far back as Schubert's. The second layer BBC PROMS 96

SYNOPSIS arrested and taken to hospital. While preparing his report on the incident, The word Wintermarchen, mea ning winter's tale Olim - prompted and guided by the off-stage (or, more strictly, fairy tale), has two di stinct chorus - begins to questi on his own role, and resonances in German. The first is fro m the very nature of law and order in a disordered Shakespeare via Sc hlegel-Tieck's classic translation society. To change the world is beyond his of The Winter5 Tale, w hose German title is Das capacity, but to help a fell ow human being is not. Winterm archen; the second and more specifi c O lim is interrupted in his ruminati ons by a is from H eine and his Deutschland - Ein M ephistophelian Lottery Agent bringing news W interm drchen . that he is the jackpot winner and advising him to The ac tion of The Silver Lake is set in an invest the proceeds on the most adva ntageous unspecified time and place, w here the 'here- and­ terms. Instead, Olim re-w rites his report in now' is so clearl y an annexe to the 'once-upon­ Severin's favo ur, resigns fro m the poli ce force, a-time, anywhere', that it would still function and purchases a remote cas tl e which is to become as such even were all memory of the German Severin's priva te and luxurious sa natorium. In hi s winter of 1932-3 to be lost. Of the fi ve named new identity as castl e- owner and benefactor, Olim fi gures, the three principals - O lim, Severin visits the still delirious Severin in hospital, and and Fennimore - have names suggesti ve of a ass umes full responsibility for his recuperation. legendary world, without nati onal or historical D ul y installed in the castle, Severin is treated connotati ons. But Frau vo n Luber and her like a lord, and already has a prodi gious appetite. accomplice the Baron Laur are recognisable as But the stronger he becomes, the more is he part of the debris from Wilhel nuan Germany, and obsessed by the idea of tracking down the like their successors today, are proud to bear th e unknown poli ceman, and ave nging himself. titles that were offi cially abolished in 1918. Severin's behavio ur is cl osely watched by Frau It is winter. Severin and his four compani ons von Luber- O lim's chatelaine and the erstw hile live in the shacks they have built in the woods owner of the castl e. Convin ced that Olim has a surrounding the Silver Lake. Long unemployed secret, she calls in her niece Fennimore, ostensibly and now destitute, they are driven by sheer to ca re fo r Severin, but ac tually to discover all she hunger to raid a suburban grocery store. Having ca n about him and his benefactor. But Fennimore made their escape, they are alrea dy nearing the is of quite another mind, and it is no fa ult of hers Sil ver Lake w hen two rural policemen, alerted by that Severin eventually discovers O lim's true the sound of a hue- and-cry, try to stop th em . As identi ty. Such is Severin's rage that the terrifi ed Synopsis they take to their heels, Constable O li m fires at O lim ta kes refu ge in an atti c and there becomes © David Drew them , severely wounding Severin, w ho is duly easy prey to vo n Luber. H aving secured O lim's BBC PROMS 96

signature to an unread document, she believes she ca n safely leave the actual throat-cutting to Severin. Even when Fennimore brings about th e complete reconciliation of the two men, von Luber remains triumphant. Thrusting Fennimore out into the howling night, she swiftly sil ences O lim; for the document he had blindly signed conveys the castle and all his worldly goods to herself and Baron Laur. Cast out like Fennimore before them , Olim and Severin head for the Sil ver Lake and th e oblivion of its waters. But th e disembodied voices of Fe1mimore and the chorus remind them of th eir duties to life and to each other. When at last they reach th e woods beside the lake, a mj ghty gust of wind sweeps the snow from the trees, and reveals the green of spring. But th e lake is still frozen solid . With new confidence, the two men start to cross towards th e other side.