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Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht’s Mahagonny Hailed on PBS's Great Performances; Propheten in Boston Premiere

Jan. 08, 2008

Los Angeles Opera's production of Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of The City of Mahagonny made its primetime television premiere conducted by James Conlon on December 17 on PBS's Great Performances series. The production is now available on DVD through Naxos of America. The broadcast of the LA Opera performance was taped during the premiere run in February, 2007 and features four-time Tony-award winner Audra Mcdonald, Patti Lupone and Anthony Dean Griffey. John Doyle, winner of the 2006 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical for Sweeney Todd, directs the production. The Sacramento Bee's Edward Ortiz had this to say on the television premiere:

The production has a freshness and an electric quality that make it jump right off the screen. Central to the success of this production is John Doyle's crisp direction and Mark Bailey's genre-bending stage design, where signs and video screens help tell this tale of existential misery amid an urban landscape full of avarice.

The Los Angeles Times remarked on the original LA Opera performances last year that "McDonald is stunning... she sings with tremendous power. She knows what the words mean. [Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey] is the perfect Jimmy. He falls for Jenny and he falls hard on his luck with a touching innocence." Opera Now wrote, "James Conlon showed the right Weill-ish stuff, deftly mixing street smarts and Modernist elegance in the performance."

Also this month in the world of Kurt Weill, the Cantata Singers of Boston, under the music direction of David Hoose, present Weill's one act biblical drama Propheten (Prophets) on January 18 and 20 as part of their season long concert series Unveiling Weill. Propheten is devised from the fourth movement of Weill's larger work The Eternal Road with text by Franz Werfel and from scriptures which traces the story of the Jews set forth in the Old Testament. The concert, which is the first Boston performance of the Weill drama, takes place in Boston's Jordan Hall on Friday, January 18 at 8 pm and Sunday, January 20 at 3 pm.

For more information on the life and work of Kurt Weill, please visit www.schott-music.com, www.universaledition.com or www.kwf.org.

For precise ticketing information regarding the Cantata Singers' performance of Propheten, visit www.cantatasingers.org.

To order a DVD of the LA Opera's production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, visit www.naxos.com.

Kurt Weill
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1927/29)
text by Bertolt Brecht
S, Mz, 3T, 2Bar, B; chorus and orchestra
2(2pic)1.1.ssax.asax.tsax.2(cbn)-2321-perc.timp-pno.harm ad lib.banjo. bass gtr.bandoneon-str
Stage orchestra: 2(2pic)2.3sax(ssax, asax, tsax)2- 2221-perc-pno.zither or xyl.banjo.bandoneon-3 vn
full evening

Prophets (Propheten)
adapted by David Drew from Act IV of The Eternal Road (1998)
text by Franz Werfel and from scriptures
singing roles: 2T, 2Bar; Singing roles from the chorus: Boy S, 2S, Mz, 2Bar; 7 speaking roles; chorus
2(pic.)1.2(eflat cl)1- 4331-perc.timp-2 pno.org.hp-str
45'

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