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Kurt Weill Around the World

Mar. 06, 2007

Kurt Weill continues to dominate music news in recent months with three new productions of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny: at Los Angeles Opera (pictured at left: Audra McDonald as Jenny Smith and Anthony Dean Griffey as Jim McIntyre), at Opera Boston, and in an upcoming production at Spoleto Festival USA 2007; a new recording of Happy End; performances at the Berlin Philharmonic; and TheSeven Deadly Sins in two new productions: one by the Royal Ballet and another with the Welsh National Opera in collaboration with the dance company Diversions.

The first ever English language recording of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s musical comedy Happy End was recently released on Ghostlight Records. This original cast recording of the American Conservatory Theatre production, conducted by Constantine Kitsopoulos, was praised by Playbill's Steven Suskin as "pure, unadulterated and acerbic joy… every bit as flavorful as its 1928 predecessor, The ThreepennyOpera." He added:

"While I count myself a big Weill fan, I didn't quite realize what we were missing. This first English-language cast album of Happy End demonstrates that it is another Threepenny, with an arguably richer score (in that it is less fragmented). Music values are tip-top, with Constantine Kitsopoulos leading what seems to be Weill's original eight-piece orchestration."

The Ghostlight recording of the musical comedy, which plays on the relationship between the Mob and the Salvation Army, also received rave reviews on the American Theatre Web which said:

"Move over Guys and Dolls. Another set of lovable, and not-too-threatening gangsters, has hit musical theater land. Actually, these Chicago gangsters have been around since 1929 when Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Happy End debuted. The lack of an English-language recording, though, has meant that the likes of Johnny Flint (or ‘Baby Face’) and Salvation Army Worker Lieutenant Lillian Holiday (also known as ‘Hallelujah, Lil’) have not been able to endear themselves to theatergoers to the extent that the denizens of Damon Runyon's Time Square have."

In addition to the great variety of Weill events stateside, the Berlin Philharmonic now has several Weill performances planned for the spring. Sir Simon Rattle will conduct Die Sieben Todsünden on the of May 1-3, 2007; May 5 and 6 sees Berlin Philharmonic performances of Weill’s Symphony No. 2 with Ion Marin conducting; and on May 18, former Artistic Director Claudio Abbado returns to the Philharmonic to conduct two performances of Weill’s Violin Concerto.

Commenting on the recent run of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Opera Boston, Jeremy Eichler in The Boston Globe writes:

"Weill's score is a breathtaking mosaic of centuries of music, shattered and recombined in ways that were revolutionary. High and low, the Baroque and the beer garden, stand cheek-by-jowl.... Opera Boston deserves credit for mounting this overdue ‘Mahagonny,’ and the response speaks for itself. With local audiences apparently hungry for fresh opera programming, the company sold out the first two performances before a single note was sung."

Kurt Weill
Symphony No. 2 (1934)
2(2 pic).2.2.2; 2.2.2.0; timp; str
Duration: 25'

Kurt Weill
Violin Concerto (1924)
2(2 pic).1.2.2; 2.1.0.0; timp, perc; db
Duration: 32'

For more on Kurt Weill please visit www.kwf.org.

To order the American Conservatory Theatre’s recording of Happy End, go to www.cduniverse.com.

To learn more about the Berlin Philharmonic, please visit www.berliner-philharmoniker.de.

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