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.