Volume 28 Kurt Weill Number 1 Newsletter Spring 2010 One Touch of Venus Volume 28 In this issue Kurt Weill Number 1 Newsletter Spring 2010 Note from the Editor 3 Correction 3 ISSN 0899-6407 Feature: One Touch of Venus © 2010 Kurt Weill Foundation for Music An Appreciation 4 7 East 20th Street Mark N. Grant New York, NY 10003-1106 tel. (212) 505-5240 The Rest of the Story 6 fax (212) 353-9663 Published twice a year, the Kurt Weill Newsletter features articles Books and reviews (books, performances, recordings) that center on Kurt Weill but take a broader look at issues of twentieth-century music “ . dass alles auch hätte anders kommen können.” and theater. With a print run of 5,000 copies, the Newsletter is dis- Beiträge zur Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts 9 ed. Susanne Schaal-Gotthardt, Luitgard Schader tributed worldwide. Subscriptions are free. The editor welcomes u. Heinz-Jürgen Winkler the submission of articles, reviews, and news items for inclusion in Scott Warfield future issues. A variety of opinions are expressed in the Newsletter; they do not Recordings necessarily represent the publisher's official viewpoint. Letters to the editor are welcome. The Stage, A Book & The Silver Screen on Reel to Reel Records 11 Staff James Holmes Elmar Juchem, Editor Carolyn Weber, Associate Editor Dave Stein, Associate Editor Brady Sansone, Production Music Kate Chisholm, Staff Reporter Zaubernacht 13 Kurt Weill Edition, Series I, volume 0 Kurt Weill Foundation Trustees ed. Elmar Juchem and Andrew Kuster Kim Kowalke, President Popular Adaptations 1927–1950 Philip Getter, Senior Vice President and Treasurer Kurt Weill Edition, Series IV, volume 2 ed. Charles Hamm, Elmar Juchem, Guy Stern, Vice President and Kim H. Kowalke Edward Harsh, Secretary James Grier André Bishop Susan Feder Performances Joanne Hubbard Cossa Walter Hinderer Paul Epstein Welz Kauffman Der Silbersee in Stockholm 16 Esbjörn Nyström Teresa Stratas, Honorary Trustee One Touch of Venus in Dessau 18 Milton Coleman, Harold Prince, Julius Rudel, Trustees Emeriti David Savran Internet Resources Street Scene in Toulon 20 William V. Madison World Wide Web: http://www.kwf.org E-mail: Four Walt Whitman Songs in Costa Mesa 22 Information: [email protected] David Farneth Weill-Lenya Research Center: [email protected] Broadway By the Year 1948 in New York 23 Kurt Weill Edition: [email protected] Joe Frazzetta Cover photo: Venus (Mary Martin) with Rodney Hatch Topical Weill 1a-8a (Kenny Baker) from the original production of One Touch of Venus. Kurt Weill Newsletter Volume 28, Number 1 3 Note from the Editor Correction “It can be played in London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow.” On 27 November In the Fall 2009 issue of the Kurt Weill 1943, less than two months after One Touch of Venus had opened on Broadway, Newsletter, Mark N. Grant’s review of Weill imagined that one day his latest work could be staged in major cities Steven Suskin’s book, The Sound of abroad—cities where he had once lived (except for Moscow), but which had Broadway Music, contained a misstate- since become sites of horrific warfare. Weill was anything but oblivious to the ment that Mr. Grant has asked us to cor- war, as his efforts to raise awareness of the Holocaust or those in support of the rect. The original sentence on p. 14 read, Allies attest, but he already longed for a world where Venus could “become an “Yet Rodgers was so annoyed when some international operetta.” Yet Weill would not live to see this dream come true: newspaper critics took note of the in January 1950 he observed that some countries were still not “equipped to do orchestration that he never hired Spialek justice to a piece like Venus,” and three months later he was dead. again.” It should have read, “Yet Rodgers What was then a musico-dramatic novelty, at least outside the Anglophone was so annoyed when some newspaper world, we might now consider a “typical” Broadway musical. In this issue we critics took note of the orchestration that trace the show’s path from vanguard to classic. And it seems that Weill was he never hired Spialek as supervising right. Slowly but surely One Touch of Venus is catching on around the world. orchestrator again.” [Spialek’s last Most recently, his hometown of Dessau, Germany mounted a full-scale pro- Rodgers show in that capacity was Pal duction of the work, and—as this issue goes to press—the Shaw Festival at Joey in 1940; he later “ghosted,” possibly Niagara-on-the-Lake in Canada presents a lengthy run of the piece. without Rodgers’s knowledge, some of • the orchestrations for Carousel and The King and I.] We note with sadness that three frequent contributors to these pages passed away earlier this year. Music critics Alan Rich of Los Angeles (see obituary on p. 5a) and Patrick O’Connor of London, and Josef Heinzelmann, dramaturg, translator, and Offenbach specialist, who also worked on pivotal productions of Weill’s Der Silbersee and Der Kuhhandel. Not just the Kurt Weill Foundation but lovers of music and theater everywhere will feel the loss of these men who did so much to shape our taste and uphold our highest standards. A shot of the barbershop scene from the current production of Elmar Juchem One Touch of Venus at the Shaw Festival. Photo: David Cooper 4 Volume 28, Number 1 Kurt Weill Newsletter One Touch of Venus: An Appreciation by Mark N. Grant It ran longer than any other Weill musical, made Mary for Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate), along with Ogden Nash, Martin a star, and yielded one of his great standards, versifier extraordinaire but a Broadway novice “Speak Low.” Yet for theater connoisseurs, One Touch of (except for a few songs in a forgotten 1932 revue), Venus is the problem piece among Weill’s American works, to do the lyrics. because it is his one generic musical comedy apparently Weill at once initiated what became a cat- devoid of significant innovations. A fresh look discloses and-mouse game to persuade Marlene that One Touch of Venus was more than just another Dietrich, whom he had known in Germany, George S. Kaufman-style show. Venus is golden age to make her Broadway debut in the title Broadway’s reply to the racy sex comedy of filmmaker role (“Speak Low” was clearly written Ernst Lubitsch; nearly all its best numbers are love with Dietrich’s voice in mind). At their songs, and in quantity and quality of risqué humor One first meeting in Hollywood Dietrich Touch of Venus arguably outstrips every other show of was interested; eventually she went so its era. (Cleverness, too—some of Ogden Nash’s acer- far as to try on various Venus costumes bic lyrics are perhaps too sophisticated to understand in New York, sign a contract, and even even on second hearing.) For all its wisecracking the do an audition from the stage of the 46th script has an almost Goethean subtext based on the Street Theatre. Crawford later recalled that, eternal Madonna/whore theme. Weill’s score out- even with her lover Jean Gabin in the audience for does even Lady in the Dark in displaying symphonic moral support, Dietrich was frightened during mastery of American pop/vernacular idioms. And the audition. Sitting in the third row, Crawford Venus is perhaps the first show where the composer and Weill couldn’t hear her over a mere piano and became the “muscle”—a case study in backstage realized they’d need to find a way to amplify her Realpolitik, with Weill outflanking the director and voice. guiding not only the creative team but ultimately When Bella Spewack presented her final the show itself. script, Crawford, Weill, and Nash all agreed The germ of the project came from an obscure that it was hopeless (upon being fired, British novella that costume designer Irene Sharaff Spewack fainted twice). Crawford (Lady in the Dark) suggested to Weill. The Tinted replaced Spewack with Nash’s friend and fel- Venus (1885) by F. Anstey tells the whimsical tale of low New Yorker contributor (and former Marx Brothers a statue of Venus in England who, Galatea-like, briefly comes scriptwriter) S.J. Perelman. Perelman’s new book jettisoned to life, and expresses her disgust at love’s debasement to the the Victorian setting and set the story in modern-day New furtive, repressed sex- York, adding highly sophisti- uality of Vic - “It is a pleasure to attend a new musical comedy that is adult, cated, not to say leeringly torianism. “F. professional, often comic and genuinely musical. It is a long time suggestive, dialogue. That Anstey” was the was too much for Dietrich; pen name of since we have heard a new and modern score in musical comedy she read the Perelman Thomas Anstey that struck us as something at once popular and unusually fine.” script and rejected it out of Guthrie – New York Post (1943) hand as “too sexy and pro- (1856–1934), a lawyer fane,” saying she couldn’t play turned journalist, novelist, and humorist for Punch. The fan- such a part onstage. Weill was so furious he resorted to tasy-like story spoke to Weill, who envisioned it as a neo- German to bawl her out. To be fair, she was right about the Offenbachian operetta, and in 1942 he interested Cheryl script: it boasts even more sexual innuendo than Pal Joey, Crawford in producing it. (Crawford had produced Johnny which had scandalized critics and theatergoers only three Johnson and the successful 1942 “revisal” of Porgy and Bess, years earlier. Perelman’s Venus says, “Love is the triumphant on which Weill had been an uncredited score doctor.) twang of a bedspring.” Another character mocks the timo- Crawford tried to woo Ira Gershwin, then Arthur Kober, to rous male lead with a plumbing double entendre: “Your adapt The Tinted Venus, but both passed.