Volume 14 Number 1 topical Weill Spring 1996 A supplement to the Kurt Weill Newsletter News &news events Speak Low Highlights May Events talk, hosted by Richard Wilson and Bryan in New York Gilliam, will take place at 6:30 at the Kaplan Penthouse in the Rose Building, Two events are planned in New York to cele- Lincoln Center. Weill’s earliest surviving brate the publication of Speak Low (When opera, Der Protagonist (1924-25), was first You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill performed in Dresden in March 1926, and Lotte Lenya by the University of conducted by Fritz Busch, and had its California Press : a book-launch party at the American premiere at the Santa Fe Opera Drama Book Shop (8 May) and a reading in 1993. and book signing at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore at Lincoln Center (9 May) at A New Star for Venus 8:00pm to which the public is invited. Two years after presenting Weill’s and Ira Other events during the month include Gershwin’s Lady in the Dark in the four concerts featuring “The Songs of Kurt “Encores! Great American Musicals in Weill” on 5-6 May at the 92nd Street Y in the Concert” series, New York’s City Center “Lyrics and Lyricists” series organized by has produced Weill again, this time One Maurice Levine, who worked with Weill in Touch of Venus on 28-30 March. The pop- the late 1940s. On 10 May, Leon Botstein Melissa Errico ular series has been delighting Broadway conducts the American Symphony Orch- fans for the last three seasons with concert In many ways the most traditional of estra in a concert performance of Der performances of rarely revived musicals. Weill’s Broadway shows, One Touch of Venus Protagonist featuring tenor Allan Glassman This year’s schedule also features DuBarry ran for 567 performances from 1943-1945, and soprano Carole Farley. A pre-concert Was a Lady (Cole Porter) and Chicago starring Mary Martin. Ogden Nash’s whim- (Kander and Ebb). sical lyrics combined with some of Weill’s Leonard Foglia, director of best melodies produced such hits as “Speak Master Class on Broadway, Low,” “That’s Him,” “I’m a Stranger Here staged the highly acclaimed per- Myself,” “West Wind,” and “Foolish formance; Hope Clarke (Jelly’s Heart.” The book, only part of which was Last Jam) was the choreograph- heard at City Center, is by the accomplished er. The role of Venus was sung humorist S.J. Perelman and Nash. by Melissa Errico, who Revivals of Der Silbersee appeared opposite Richard Chamberlain as Eliza Doolittle A number of Der Silbersee performances in the recent revival of My Fair have been mounted in Europe during the Lady and played a leading role current musical season. In Vienna, the Neue in the television series Central Oper Wien performed the opera on the occa- Park West. Ben Brantley of the sion of the Jeunesse Weill Festival in October New York Times described Ms. 1995. Leipzig’s concert performance and Errico’s performance as Dessau’s stage production of Der Silbersee “divine. [She] isn’t the only premiered in early March. A fourth produc- jewel in the production. tion of Der Silbersee, in concert form, will be Andy Taylor, who registered as performed by the London Sinfonietta, under merely goofy in the leaden the baton of Markus Stenz, on 21 July at the farce, Moon Over Buffalo, is Royal Albert Hall as one of the BBC here triumphantly goofy.” Promenade Concerts. While casting is Other cast members included incomplete, the following singers have been Kevin Chamberlin, Marilyn confirmed: Heinz Kruse, Juanita Lascarro, Cooper, David Alan Grier, Jane Graham Clark, Helga Dernesch, Heinz Krakowski, Danny Rutigliano, Zednik, Gidon Saks, Catrin Wyn Davies, and and Carol Woods. Katerina Karneus. 2a Volume 14, Number 1 Topical Weill Press Clippings The cartoon-like construction of Love Life, Opera North Presents innovative in its day, relies on swift shifts of European Premiere of Love Life scene, sharp-as-a-nail entries of the pit orchestra and split-second timing to keep the Weill and Lerner’s ‘vaudeville in two parts’ pace up. If the hiatuses of the opening night of 1948 is an astonishing piece of work. suggested that more technical rehearsal ‘Years ahead of its time’ may be the hoariest would not go amiss, the simple scenic of clichés, but no other words will do. As the devices employed here looked as though performance of this virtually plotless ‘con- nothing could be swifter to shift. cept’ musical progressed in Leeds, title after —Geoffrey Norris, Daily Telegraph (29 title of Broadway shows that could scarcely January 1996) have happened without its example kept springing to mind, particularly those of [In the second act] the music’s pungency Sondheim . There are also detectable fore- intensified and the whole show fell into casts of West Side Story, Gypsy and Cabaret. place. Such numbers as Susan’s torch song, . You come out of the theatre unable to As Opera North’s brave production of “Is It Him or Is It Me?”, Sam’s hotel-room decide which of half-a-dozen great tunes you Love Life creaked towards the final curtain, it “This Is the Life,” in which he rejoices in his should be humming and, as is the case with became clear just how difficult it is to stage single state but at heart is wretched, and the Weill’s European pieces, this means you have one of Kurt Weill’s Broadway musicals con- Divorce Ballet are superb inspirations that been got at: the tunes carry words that you vincingly. Within a more restricted bud- poignantly convey the pain of a marriage might not otherwise find palatable. get, Opera North’s director, Carolyn Gawn, break-up. —Rodney Milnes, The Times (27 January and her designers, Charles Edwards and —Michael Kennedy, Sunday Telegraph (28 1996) Nicky Gillibrand, have not done a bad job. January 1996) Berlin Welcomes New Translation work better than his staging, providing a Der Silbersee revived in Weill’s of Johnny Johnson number of moments that ignited spontaneous city of birth, Dessau applause on opening night, such as the sud- Compared with other Weill musicals (Lady den powerful metamorphosis of an army Der Silbersee has always been considered a in the Dark, Street Scene, Lost in the Stars), ward full of men, totally swaddled in ban- “problem” piece, being a play by Georg Johnny Johnson has never really taken off, dages, into a military cemetery seeming to Kaiser with music by Weill, and thus requir- so Berlin’s Theater des Westens revival auto- ing actors as well as singers. extend into infinity. matically assumes importance. It even The non-problems vanished in the highly Johnny evokes such disparate literary fig- amounts almost to a second world premiere, accomplished Dessau production, which ures as Parsifal (German legend’s “guileless for Fred Berndt, who has designed as well as was given under the aegis of the drama fool”) and the do-gooder hero of Thornton staged it, has resurrected virtually every bit company with a couple of guests from the Wilder’s hilarious novel Heaven’s My news &news events of Weill’s original score. opera ensemble. No seams showed: You Destination. With Jörg Gronius, he has also created had to look up in the theatre yearbook to The Theater des Westens, which special- supplementary text and translated some of find out which were actors and which were izes in big, usually American, musicals, has the originals — leaving a puzzling amount, singers—which is as it should be. provided a large cast and a lavish production, incongruously enough, in Green’s original The evening was enormously rewarding: but one suspects it has stinted on rehearsal English. brilliant, unashamedly epic acting from time, especially for the music. Berndt has Gerhard Siegel (a fine tenor) as the unem- In spite of serious flaws, Berndt’s produc- staged things at a self-defeatingly easygoing ployed worker Severin, and Karl Thiele as tion adds up to a rewarding evening. His sets pace — the performance runs three hours — the policeman who wounds and then blunting many of the work’s sharp edges, befriends him: no-holds-barred bourgeois and Peter Fischer (who on the podium villains in Regula Steiner and Konrad Rupf; reportedly found himself confronting an Stefanie Wüst charming as Fennimore, who orchestra that varied in personnel from gets to sing the rip-roaring “Ballad of rehearsal to rehearsal) mostly beats time Caesar’s Death.” Ensemble lives! And you rather than maintaining tension. saw precisely why the Nazis feared Weill One suspects also that Weill found himself so much: the combination of his music and Kaiser’s faux-naif text is lethal—“ten times on uncertain ground: One hears little of his tougher than any Brecht play” in the words Berlin successes’ acrid irony, and he had yet of the original director, Douglas Sirk. to assimilate the American idiom he obvi- The waltz that ends Silbersee leads ously aspired to. He rarely wrote a better straight to Broadway. Contrary to received number than “Johnny’s Song,” but in this opinion, there really was only one Weill. insecure transitional score it finds little com- pany. —Paul Moor, International Herald —Rodney Milnes, The Times (6 March Tribune (17 January 1996) 1996) Topical Weill Volume 14, Number 1 3a More News news &news events On the Road to Saint Paul Piccolo Teatro dell’Opera of Brooklyn, NY. The festival also featured two other stage The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra per- works: Der Silbersee at the Anhaltisches formed Mahagonny Songspiel at the Ordway Theater and Down in the Valley in the Music Theatre, in its “Masterworks” series, Marienkirche.