Volume 16 Kurt Weill Number 2 Newsletter Fall 1998 L E N Y A Centenary Volume 16 In this issue Kurt Weill Number 2 Newsletter Fall 1998 Lenya Centenary In Praise of a Career 3 I Remember Lenya 4 ISSN 0899-6407 Listening to Lenya 8 David Hamilton © 1998 Kurt Weill Foundation for Music 7 East 20th Street Books New York, NY 10003-1106 tel. (212) 505-5240 Excerpts from fax (212) 353-9663 Lenya the Legend edited by David Farneth 13 Emigrierte Komponisten in der Medienlandschaft The Newsletter is published to provide an open forum des Exils 1933-1945 edited by Nils Grosch, wherein interested readers may express a variety of opin- Joachim Lucchesi, and Jürgen Schebera 14 ions. The opinions expressed do not necessarily represent Wolfgang Jacobsen the publisher’s official viewpoint. The editor encourages the submission of articles, reviews, and news items for inclusion Kurt Weill work entries in in future issues. Pipers Enzyklopädie des Musiktheaters 15 Nils Grosch Performances Staff David Farneth, Editor Lys Symonette, Translator Propheten in London 16 Andrew Porter Edward Harsh, Associate Editor Dave Stein, Production Joanna Lee, Associate Editor Brian Butcher, Production Mahagonny in Salzburg 18 Rodney Milnes Kurt Weill Foundation Trustees “Go for Kurt Weill” in Salzburg 19 Kim Kowalke, President Paul Epstein Nils Grosch Lys Symonette, Vice-President Walter Hinderer Mahagonny Songspiel in Karlsruhe 20 Philip Getter, Vice-President Harold Prince Andreas Hauff Guy Stern, Secretary Julius Rudel Recordings Milton Coleman, Treasurer Symphony no. 2/Violin Concerto/Mahagonny Suite (Berlin Philharmonic; Zimmermann; Jansons) 21 Internet Resources Michael von der Linn World Wide Web: http://www.kwf.org Lady in the Dark E-mail: (Royal National Theater Cast Recording) 22 Information: [email protected] Larry Lash Weill-Lenya Research Center: [email protected] Supplement: Topical Weill Kurt Weill Edition: [email protected] Lenya Centenary 1a, 5a Press Clippings 2a, 3a Weill Centenary 3a, 5a Upcoming Events 4a News 6a New Recordings 7a Cover photo: Lenya in her dressing room at the Theater New Publications 8a de Lys, New York City, ca. 1955. Photo: Gena Jackson. Kurt Weill Newsletter Volume 16, Number 2 3 LENYA In Praise of a Career otte Lenya is a star and a Lloner. Nothing can be done he was good. She about it. She is tremendous. Swas very, very [Her performance is] as excit- good. Her diction ing as anything I've ever heard, was particularly good. and bold enough to suit I wish to note this anyone.—Edith Oliver,The New Yorker, 1962. here unequivocally. —Alfred Kerr, Berliner ave you ever been where Tageblatt, 1928. Hthousands of people begged replenishment from one person and poured down love on that person in return? I have, once or twice. Once a few years ago, when the per- son was Judy Garland. Once ence the voice of Lotte Lenya, sweet, Friday night with Lotte Lenya. Hhigh, light, dangerous, cool, with the She is a woman who happens radiance of the crescent moon.—Ernst Bloch, 1935. to have been born with the map of a life in her face and voice, and four decades have enya can infuse the word "baloney" with a been stirred by it. She stands wealth of knowingness that makes Mae there, head back, hands on L hips, the joyous scar of a West seem positively ingenue.—Constant Lambert, 1933. mouth slightly grinning in recognition of a disordered world. She pushes back her sleeves. She sings German, English, and otte Lenya stepped to mankind, with a healthy leavening of womankind. Lthe front of the stage to We shall not see her like again.—Jerry Tallmer, New York sing her air about Pirate Post, 1965. Jenny. At that moment the miniature confines of the p on the stage, theater stretched and Uglowing like a were replaced by a broad Halloween pumpkin and sweeping arena of under the hot lights genuine sentiment. For of honky-tonk Berlin, that's what art can do, and was Berlin itself: face like a clock without a that's what an artist does. second hand, a red —Jay Harrison, New York Herald Tribune, 1954. slash of lipstick across her mouth, enya has magnetism and a raw lovely voice body draped in a tacky maroon wrapper with big Llike a boy soprano. Her stylized gestures yellow flowers, a gold medallion on a black velvet seem strange because of her natural warmth; but ribbon around her neck, one hand on her hip and in the strangeness lies the slight enigma which is the other waving gently toward imaginary stars, her charm. singing in that voice like a musical cement mixer. —Marc Blitzstein, Modern Music, 1935. —Rex Reed, New York Times Magazine, 1966. 4 Volume 16, Number 2 Kurt Weill Newsletter ome time after Kurt Weill died, Lenya married a gentleman by I Remember Lenya . Sthe name of George Davis. One night he was severely beaten and was taken to New York Hospital. Lenya rushed to the hospital to maintain a vigil while he was being operated on. As it turns out, Ira Gershwin was in New York at the time and uring my marriage to Margaret Anderson, she and I were heard about it. Although it was late at night, he called Max Dreyfus lucky enough to be visiting Kurt and Lenya on South D at his country home. He thought that there might be accrued roy- Mountain Road when the conductor Maurice Abravanel had come alties from the stage musical Lady in the Dark, and Lenya could to visit after a long interval and Kurt and Lenya were moved to probably use the money for the doctor bills. Dreyfus came to the reenact from memory what they recalled of The Seven Deadly Sins. city along with Ben Goldberg, the firm’s controller. There turned Margaret and I sat on the floor entranced and became audience to out to be about $17,000 in the account and a check was hastily a work we had no knowledge of, which was retailed to us in narra- drawn. tive interpolations. It was an unforgettable occasion. Lenya’s per- Gershwin rushed to the hospital to find Lenya in the waiting formance, Abravanel at the piano, with Kurt’s interventions of room. He explained what he had done, and handed her the check. occasional scraps of low-pitched song carrying the narrative. I have She looked at it for a moment and said to Ira, “Do I have to take it no recall of when in the early 40s this this year?” happened; only of our awareness that —John Cacavas, composer we had been uniquely lucky. —Quentin Anderson, New City neigh- bor and son of Weill’s collaborator, enya’s often blunt frankness never ceased to astound Maxwell Anderson Land delight me. I’ll never forget the dinner we took together with a friend who thought he was the world authority on theater. Halfway through the meal he unwise- have so many memories of Lenya. ly pontificated to Lenya that he did not “think much” of I still live in the same building as I Brecht & Weill’s stage work — that it was “too intellectual.” she did, and I often think of wonder- Lenya slowly puffed and dragged on her cigarette, then ful evenings in her apartment on the snapped, “The problem with you, Mr. M——, is that you sixteenth floor and in the country. don’t like to think in the theater!” One winter night in the city, as she Despite the many critics who have named Lenya as one stroked her beloved cat, Kenji, she of the great dramatic singers of the twentieth century, told me about the day she became an Lenya’s insecurities plagued her to the very moment she American citizen. stepped on stage. I remember sitting with her and Anna It was in May, 1944, if I remem- Krebs in her living room the morning after her legendary ber correctly, a few months after Carnegie Hall concert in 1965 and reading the rave reviews Kurt Weill got his papers. Lenya from numerous papers. told me she’d studied everything Lenya confessed: “The “they” told her. “I said the Pledge of night before the concert I Allegiance to myself every day for a dreamed I was on stage week,” she said, “and the day I went, singing, but the auditorium I was so nervous I thought I would was empty except for a few be sick. The room was filled with people, all kinds, old ladies sitting in the front and the judge called almost everyone in the room row, passing a picnic basket before he got to me, and he asked them a million between themselves and questions. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I won’t make it. talking the whole time.” But They will send me back and everything will be over.’ perhaps that was Lenya’s Finally, the judge called my name and I walked up secret for success: never saying the Pledge of Allegiance to myself. ‘Mrs. grow full of yourself and Weill, who was the first President of the United allow a false sense of securi- States?’ I looked at the Judge and I thought, Thank ty to get the best of you. God, I know the answer!. ‘Abraham Lincoln,’ I —Ted Mitchell, friend said, as loud as I could. ‘That’s good enough,’ he said, and I was in!” I stared at her, speechless, and then she leaned over, took my hands and whispered, almost conspir- atorially, “I would have been a real flop if he asked me one more question.” We laughed until we were weak.