Kurt Weill - KWFthe orchestrations for Carouseland The King and I.] Note from the Editor “It can...

Kur t WeillN e w s l e t t e r

Vo l u m e 2 8

N u m b e r 1

S p r i n g 2 0 1 0

OneTouch of Venus

In this issue

Note from the Editor 3

Correction 3

Feature: One Touch of Venus

An Appreciation 4Mark N. Grant

The Rest of the Story 6

Books

“ . . . dass alles auch hätte anders kommen können.”Beiträge zur Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts 9ed. Susanne Schaal-Gotthardt, Luitgard Schaderu. Heinz-Jürgen Winkler

Scott Warfield

Recordings

The Stage, A Book & The Silver Screenon Reel to Reel Records 11

James Holmes

Music

Zaubernacht 13Kurt Weill Edition, Series I, volume 0ed. Elmar Juchem and Andrew Kuster

Popular Adaptations 1927–1950Kurt Weill Edition, Series IV, volume 2ed. Charles Hamm, Elmar Juchem,and Kim H. Kowalke

James Grier

Performances

Der Silbersee in Stockholm 16Esbjörn Nyström

One Touch of Venus in Dessau 18David Savran

Street Scene in Toulon 20William V. Madison

Four Walt Whitman Songs in Costa Mesa 22David Farneth

Broadway By the Year 1948 in New York 23Joe Frazzetta

Topical Weill 1a-8a

Ku r t We i l l N e w s l e t t e r

Vo l u m e 2 8

N u m b e r 1

S p r i n g 2 0 1 0

Cover photo: Venus (Mary Martin) with Rodney Hatch(Kenny Baker) from the original production of OneTouch of Venus.

ISSN 0899-6407

© 2010 Kurt Weill Foundation for Music

7 East 20th Street

New York, NY 10003-1106

tel. (212) 505-5240

fax (212) 353-9663

Published twice a year, the Kurt Weill Newsletter features articlesand reviews (books, performances, recordings) that center on KurtWeill but take a broader look at issues of twentieth-century musicand theater. With a print run of 5,000 copies, the Newsletter is dis-tributed worldwide. Subscriptions are free. The editor welcomesthe submission of articles, reviews, and news items for inclusion infuture issues.

A variety of opinions are expressed in the Newsletter; they do notnecessarily represent the publisher's official viewpoint. Letters tothe editor are welcome.

Staff

Elmar Juchem, Editor Carolyn Weber, Associate Editor

Dave Stein, Associate Editor Brady Sansone, Production

Kate Chisholm, Staff Reporter

Kurt Weill Foundation Trustees

Kim Kowalke, President

Philip Getter, Senior Vice President and Treasurer

Guy Stern, Vice President

Edward Harsh, Secretary

André Bishop Susan Feder

Joanne Hubbard Cossa Walter Hinderer

Paul Epstein Welz Kauffman

Teresa Stratas, Honorary Trustee

Milton Coleman, Harold Prince, Julius Rudel, Trustees Emeriti

Internet Resources

World Wide Web: http://www.kwf.org

E-mail:

Information: [email protected]

Weill-Lenya Research Center: [email protected]

Kurt Weill Edition: [email protected]

Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 28, Number 1 3

Correction

In the Fall 2009 issue of the Kurt WeillNewsletter, Mark N. Grant’s review ofSteven Suskin’s book, The Sound ofBroadway Music, contained a misstate-ment that Mr. Grant has asked us to cor-rect. The original sentence on p. 14 read,“Yet Rodgers was so annoyed when somenewspaper critics took note of theorchestration that he never hired Spialekagain.” It should have read, “Yet Rodgerswas so annoyed when some newspapercritics took note of the orchestration thathe never hired Spialek as supervisingorchestrator again.” [Spialek’s lastRodgers show in that capacity was PalJoey in 1940; he later “ghosted,” possiblywithout Rodgers’s knowledge, some ofthe orchestrations for Carousel and TheKing and I.]

Note from the Editor“It can be played in London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow.” On 27 November1943, less than two months after One Touch of Venus had opened on Broadway,Weill imagined that one day his latest work could be staged in major citiesabroad—cities where he had once lived (except for Moscow), but which hadsince become sites of horrific warfare. Weill was anything but oblivious to thewar, as his efforts to raise awareness of the Holocaust or those in support of theAllies attest, but he already longed for a world where Venus could “become aninternational operetta.” Yet Weill would not live to see this dream come true:in January 1950 he observed that some countries were still not “equipped to dojustice to a piece like Venus,” and three months later he was dead.

What was then a musico-dramatic novelty, at least outside the Anglophoneworld, we might now consider a “typical” Broadway musical. In this issue wetrace the show’s path from vanguard to classic. And it seems that Weill wasright. Slowly but surely One Touch of Venus is catching on around the world.Most recently, his hometown of Dessau, Germany mounted a full-scale pro-duction of the work, and—as this issue goes to press—the Shaw Festival atNiagara-on-the-Lake in Canada presents a lengthy run of the piece.

•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 onp. 5a) and Patrick O’Connor of London, and Josef Heinzelmann, dramaturg,translator, and Offenbach specialist, who also worked on pivotal productions ofWeill’s Der Silbersee and Der Kuhhandel. Not just the Kurt Weill Foundationbut lovers of music and theater everywhere will feel the loss of these men whodid so much to shape our taste and uphold our highest standards.

Elmar Juchem A shot of the barbershop scene from the current production of

One Touch of Venus at the Shaw Festival. Photo: David Cooper

4 Volume 28, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter

One Touch of Venus: An Appreciationby Mark N. Grant

It ran longer than any other Weill musical, made MaryMartin a star, and yielded one of his great standards,“Speak Low.” Yet for theater connoisseurs, One Touch ofVenus is the problem piece among Weill’s American works,because it is his one generic musical comedy apparentlydevoid of significant innovations. A fresh look disclosesthat One Touch of Venus was more than just anotherGeorge S. Kaufman-style show. Venus is golden ageBroadway’s reply to the racy sex comedy of filmmakerErnst Lubitsch; nearly all its best numbers are lovesongs, and in quantity and quality of risqué humor OneTouch of Venus arguably outstrips every other show ofits era. (Cleverness, too—some of Ogden Nash’s acer-bic lyrics are perhaps too sophisticated to understandeven on second hearing.) For all its wisecracking thescript has an almost Goethean subtext based on theeternal Madonna/whore theme. Weill’s score out-does even Lady in the Dark in displaying symphonicmastery of American pop/vernacular idioms. AndVenus is perhaps the first show where the composerbecame the “muscle”—a case study in backstageRealpolitik, with Weill outflanking the director andguiding not only the creative team but ultimatelythe show itself.

The germ of the project came from an obscureBritish novella that costume designer Irene Sharaff(Lady in the Dark) suggested to Weill. The TintedVenus (1885) by F. Anstey tells the whimsical tale ofa statue of Venus in England who, Galatea-like, briefly comesto life, and expresses her disgust at love’s debasement to thefurtive, repressed sex-uality of Vic -torianism. “F.Anstey” was thepen name ofThomas AnsteyGuthrie(1856–1934), a lawyerturned journalist, novelist, and humorist for Punch. The fan-tasy-like story spoke to Weill, who envisioned it as a neo-Offenbachian operetta, and in 1942 he interested CherylCrawford in producing it. (Crawford had produced JohnnyJohnson and the successful 1942 “revisal” of Porgy and Bess,on which Weill had been an uncredited score doctor.)Crawford tried to woo Ira Gershwin, then Arthur Kober, toadapt The Tinted Venus, but both passed. Then she securedBella Spewack, who with her husband Sam had written ColePorter’s 1938 Leave It to Me (and would later write the book

for Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate), along with Ogden Nash,versifier extraordinaire but a Broadway novice

(except for a few songs in a forgotten 1932 revue),to do the lyrics.

Weill at once initiated what became a cat-and-mouse game to persuade Marlene

Dietrich, whom he had known in Germany,to make her Broadway debut in the titlerole (“Speak Low” was clearly writtenwith Dietrich’s voice in mind). At theirfirst meeting in Hollywood Dietrichwas interested; eventually she went sofar as to try on various Venus costumes

in New York, sign a contract, and evendo an audition from the stage of the 46th

Street Theatre. Crawford later recalled that,even with her lover Jean Gabin in the audience formoral support, Dietrich was frightened duringthe audition. Sitting in the third row, Crawfordand Weill couldn’t hear her over a mere piano andrealized they’d need to find a way to amplify hervoice.

When Bella Spewack presented her finalscript, Crawford, Weill, and Nash all agreed

that it was hopeless (upon being fired,Spewack fainted twice). Crawford

replaced Spewack with Nash’s friend and fel-low New Yorker contributor (and former Marx Brothersscriptwriter) S.J. Perelman. Perelman’s new book jettisonedthe Victorian setting and set the story in modern-day New

York, adding highly sophisti-cated, not to say leeringlysuggestive, dialogue. Thatwas too much for Dietrich;she read the Perelmanscript and rejected it out ofhand as “too sexy and pro-

fane,” saying she couldn’t playsuch a part onstage. Weill was so furious he resorted toGerman to bawl her out. To be fair, she was right about thescript: it boasts even more sexual innuendo than Pal Joey,which had scandalized critics and theatergoers only threeyears earlier. Perelman’s Venus says, “Love is the triumphanttwang of a bedspring.” Another character mocks the timo-rous male lead with a plumbing double entendre: “Yourtrouble’s in the cellar! Your Bemis valve is clogged, brother.”

The search for a Venus recommenced, but Ilona Massey,Vera Zorina, and Gertrude Lawrence all declined. Then

“It is a pleasure to attend a new musical comedy that is adult,professional, often comic and genuinely musical. It is a long timesince we have heard a new and modern score in musical comedythat struck us as something at once popular and unusually fine.”

– New York Post (1943)


casting against typeproved inspired:Crawford contactedyoung Mary Martin,who after her splashyBroadway debutsinging “My HeartBelongs to Daddy” inLeave It to Me had notfared well as a siren ina few Hollywood Bmovies. Martin likedthe songs but couldn’timagine herself playingVenus, until her hus-band Richard Hallidaytook her to theMetropolitan Museumand showed her thatthe goddess appears ina great variety ofshapes and sizes. The5’ 4-1/2” Martin worestiletto heels, dyed herhair pink, and took advice from lead dancer Sono Osato onhow to stand regally. Director Elia Kazan helped her toevolve a slow, legato gait that contrasted with everyone elseonstage, especially in hectic dance numbers. Crawford’s mas-terstroke came in hiring the couturier Mainbocher to createVenus’s gowns (contrary to some sources, it was notMainbocher’s first Broadway assignment). “Every time I

walked on stage as Venus there was applause—for Main’sclothes,” Martin later recalled. Photo spreads of Martin’sgowns in Vogue, Life, and other top magazines catapulted herto fame.

Once Perelman finished revamping the plot,Weill, who had already composed several songs,now had to further Americanize the sound. Forsome time orchestra contractor Morris Stonzekhad been taking Weill around town to meet musi-cians and sharpen his knowledge of swing styles ofwind playing. He arranged Venus for a 28-pieceorchestra with a sizable string section and resistedCrawford when she suggested cutting the numberof musicians to save money. The production num-bers in the score sound like a much largerHollywood orchestra, as if Max Steiner and GlennMiller had been cross-bred. Weill displays a mas-tery of American idioms: light swing (“One Touch

of Venus”), Irving Berlin-style ragtime(“How Much I Love You”), barbershop(‘The Trouble With Women”), “hot” blues(“I’m a Stranger Here Myself ”). Even thewaltz “Foolish Heart,” though it starts outViennese, culminates in a dance numberbased on “What Shall We Do With aDrunken Sailor?” There are also sly homagesto both Broadway and operetta genre-pieces:“Way Out West in Jersey” recalls LorenzHart’s lyric for “Way Out West on West EndAvenue” from Babes in Arms (1937). TheBowery waltz “The Trouble with Women”harks back to “Women Women Women”from Lehár’s Merry Widow even as itpresages “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” fromKiss Me, Kate (indeed, Harry Clark, one ofthe quartet, became one of the two thugswho sang the number in the later show). In“New Art,” a catalogue-of-painters song,Weill nods to “Tschaikowsky” (a catalogue ofcomposers) from Lady in the Dark. The pro-duction numbers “Catch Hatch” and“Doctor Crippen” anticipate by a generation

the Music Hall-Grand Guignol style of Sweeney Todd. Thefull score badly needs a complete modern recording.

No musical detail was too small for Weill. Choreo -grapher Agnes de Mille recalled that he would go “to theback of the auditorium where he can hear a balanced soundfrom the orchestra and voices. This will not be exact becausea full audience will change all the acoustics, but he knows

how to correct for the difference. He will instructthe stage manager which of the singers toamplify on the over-all sound system. He willedit on the spot orchestration for audibility ofspeech and vocal balance.” Weill had his influ-ence on the text, too; he suggested the key line

from Much Ado About Nothing (“Speak low, if youspeak love”) to Ogden Nash. By all accounts, Weill played agreater role than Elia Kazan, who later described himself asan overpaid stage manager. Kazan tried hard—he made copi-

ous notes on the script—but doesn’t really seemto have understood theshow. He later creditedits success to Weill, deMille, Mary Martin, anddancer Sono Osato. DeMille’s judgment that he“lacked visual sense”seems fair, and it’s alsoclear that he did nothave the right sense ofhumor to appreciatePerelman’s and Nash’sefforts.

“The musical show we have all been waiting for…. There isstyle in the Perelman-Nash libretto, humor in the Nash lyrics,

felicity in Kurt Weill’s score…. The Weill music is a source of continualdelight.” – New York Herald Tribune (1943)

production. The performance served as a wake-up call to theNew York theater world and set the stage for a full-blownrevival at Goodspeed Opera House featuring Lynnette Perryin 1987. Ten years later, another concert rendering in NewYork was rapturously received when Melissa Errico played

Venus atEncores! in1996. If youhad to sumup criticalreaction inone sen-tence, youcould do alot worsethan AileenJacobso n’sj u d g m e n t :“the magical

musical with a dream-team pedigree.”Europe discovered Venus in the 1990s as well. 1994 saw

productions in Sweden and Germany (a national premiere),where it shows signs of settling into the repertory now that ithas received about half a dozen productions, most recently inDessau with Ute Gfrerer as Venus (see review on page 18). Inthe last five years, major stagings in England (Opera North)and France (Opéra de Lyon/Théâtre de la Renaissance) havereceived extensive praise and generated sufficient interest towarrant tours. Opera North took its production to theRavenna Festival in Italy and to Sadler’s Wells in London withgreat success. And again, the critics raved. No less than JohnAllison wrote in the Times, “it is surely time to acknowledgethat his American works represent the peak of Weill’s achieve-ment. . . . One Touch of Venus confirms again his mastery of themusical theatre.”

Yet there have been surprisingly few opportunities latelyto catch Venus in the U.S. Although regional productions havecontinued, there has never been a Broadway revival of one ofWeill’s finest musicals. However, Venus has begun a summer-long run of 80 performances at the Shaw Festival just acrossthe border in Ontario. Now plenty of people can see for them-selves why Lewis Nichols of the New York Times called theshow “a near approach to heaven” back in 1943.


NBC-TV, 1955

Every Broadway showbrought out the workhorsein Weill, and Venus was noexception. A month after theshow opened Weill wrote to his parents, “During the sevenweeks before the show’s opening I never slept more than twoor three hours a night, because I had to be at rehearsals dur-ing the day and had to orchestrate at night.” Even then,Lenya was alarmed about Weill’s fearsome schedule and highblood pressure. He was by far the hardest-working composer

on Broadway—RichardRodgers’s labors were noth-

ing compared to Weill’s—andhe maintained a similarly pun-

ishing schedule through all his subsequent Broadway shows,which no doubt contributed to his early death.

One Touch of Venus: The Rest of the Story

After the Broadway run ended, a road tour (sadly shortenedby Martin’s illness) and the prospect of a Hollywood film(Mary Pickford bought the rights in September1944) kept the fire burning. The film (1948) hadsome success, mostly due to the young AvaGardner’s performance as Venus, even though itrevamped the book and cut Weill’s score to thebone. And the show lived on through numerousstock and regional productions—notably theStarlight Operetta in Dallas (1948, with VivianBlaine and Kenny Baker), the St. Louis MunicipalOpera (1953, with Russell Nype), and the TexasState Fair (1955, with Janet Blair and RussellNype). The last was made into a 90-minute televi-sion spectacular on NBC, which was much morefaithful to the original than Hollywood’s effort.

Then, as Broadway and popular music under-went profound changes, Venus was eclipsed like so many showsfrom Broadway’s golden age. But theater pros remembered itfondly, and its renaissance began with a remarkable concertreading at New York’s Town Hall in 1983. A stellar cast includ-ed Paige O’Hara, Ron Raines, Peggy Cass, Susan Lucci, andbest of all, Paula Laurence reprising her role in the original

“Weill's music is the loveliest this side of heaven.”– New York World Telegram (1943)

Universal-International, 1948

For other essays on Weill’s Broadway shows by Mark N.Grant, please visit www.kwf.org. The site also featuresa full synopsis of Venus and other shows by Mr. Grant.

“Suchnumbers as

‘Speak Low,’ ‘FoolishHeart,’ ‘I’m aStranger HereMyself,’ ‘WoodenWedding’ are gemsof their kind and asrendered by MissBlair and Mr. Nypereminded the view-er of the indestruc-tible quality of thelate composer’sshowtunes.” – Variety

(1955)


Opéra de Lyon, 2006 King’s HeadTheatre,London, 2001

“As the love goddess who fell to earth in the charming concert versionof One Touch of Venus, Melissa Errico is, in a word, divine. . . . Where else

does one get to see a show that combines the singular talents of Weill, Nash,and Perelman? The old boys deliver some delicious goods.”

– Ben Brantley, New York Times (1996)

Encores!, New York, 1996

Opera North, 2004

“A joyous, witty entertainment, distin-guished by sassy performances. Best of all are

conductor James Holmes and the orchestra, whoknow exactly what they’re doing with the score and

could transfer to Broadway tomorrow.” – George Hall, Independent (2004)

“The plot has all the manic intensity of a MarxBrothers farce. . . . If there is any justice, One Touch ofVenus should be sure of a long West End life.”

– Sheridan Morley, The Spectator (2001)

“Weill makes fun of bourgeois mentality and of the art world,and the satire still works well today, especially in this clever

mise en scène.” – Franck Mallet, Classica Repertoire (2006)

“[Ute Gfrerer’s] gracefully nuanced perfor-mance of ‘That’s Him’ was unforgettable.”

– David Savran, Kurt Weill Newsletter (2010)

“Weill was the greatest composerever to work on Broadway. Thescore is clever and lovely... S.J.Perelman, aided by Ogden Nash,contributed a sweetly sexybook... A Victorian novella heregiven a dry Manhattan twist.”– Clive Barnes, New York Post (1996)

Dessau,2010


A review of the Shaw Festival Venus will appear in the Fall issue. Here are some early press reactions:

“Ryan De Souza’s musical direction and [Paul Sportelli’s] re-orchestration of the music, played by a first-rate band, is asclose to perfection as it gets. Not only does it sound wonder-ful, it sounds correct: 1943 come to life.” – RichardOuzounian, TorontoStar

"You get a lot ofmusic from a 10-piece orchestra but itis a compromise.How much betterwould it sound with28 instruments in alarge theatre!" –James Karas, TheGreek Press

“As Rodney Hatch, the unassuming barber who inadvertentlybrings Venus to life, the loose-limbed Kyle Blair is a natural,charming fit, while Julie Martell tackles the role of hisdeclasse fiancée with jarring enthusiasm. Meanwhile Mark

Uhre and DeborahHay stop just shy ofstealing the entireshow in a pair ofdelightful perfor-mances as modernart maven WhitelawSavory and his long-suffering girl Friday,Molly Grant, re -spectively.” – JohnColbourn, TorontoSun

Feature photo credits:

p. 4: Mary Martin as Venus (Broadway, 1943)p. 5, top: Paula Laurence as Molly and John Boles as Savory (photo: Vandamm)p. 5, bottom: Ruth Bond as Gloria, Teddy Hart as Taxi, and Kenny Baker as Rodney, (photo:Vandamm)p. 6, right: Robert Walker as Eddie and Ava Gardner as Venus (film version, 1948)p. 6, bottom left: Janet Blair as Venus and Russell Nype as Rodneyp. 7, top left: second from left, Jacques Verzier as Savory (photo: Franchella/Stoffleth)p. 7, top right: Maxine Howe as Mrs. Kramer and Gina Murray as Gloria (photo: AshScott Lockyer)

p. 7, center: Andy Taylor as Rodney and Melissa Errico as Venus (photo: GerryGoodstein)p. 7, bottom left: Ute Gfrerer as Venus (photo: Thomas Ruttke)p. 7, bottom right: Loren Geeting as Rodney, Carole Wilson as Mrs. Kramer, and JessicaWalker as Gloria (photo: Stephen Vaughan)p. 8, top left: Dale O’Brien as Taxi, Michael Piontek as Rodney, Richard Sabellico asSavory, and Nick Corley as Stanley (photo: Norman Glasband)p. 8, top right: Fabrice Dalis as Rodney and Sabine Schmidt-Kirchner as Venus (photo:Klaus Fröhlich)p. 8, bottom: Robin Evan Willis as Venus and Kyle Blair as Rodney (photo: David Cooper)

“In contrast to many other musicals of past eras, the show isageless. The Weill score is as varied as it is melodic, with waltzesand ballads sharing the stage with a barbershop quartet.”

– Mel Gussow, New York Times (1987)

Freiburg,1998

“One can only marvel at the melodic riches of the score,with one catchy tune succeeding the next, setting the

audience tapping its feet. . . . It all added up to a gorgeousperformance.” – Horst Koegler, Opera (1999)

Goodspeed OperaHouse, 1987

Shaw Festival, 2010


Books

“…dass alles auch hätte anders kommenkönnen.” Beiträge zur Musik des 20.Jahrhunderts

Hrsg. v. Susanne Schaal-Gotthardt, LuitgardSchader u. Heinz-Jürgen Winkler

Mainz: Schott, 2009, 349 pp. (Frankfurter Studien. Veröffentlichungen des

Hindemith-Instituts Frankfurt/Main; Bd. XII)

ISBN: 978-3-7957-0649-4

Festschriften have always occupied a minor corner within the realmof scholarly writings, including music history. These often wide-ranging miscellanies, held together only by the interests of the ded-icatee or even just what colleagues and friends might feel like offer-ing, generally have modest appeal beyond a small circle of admirersand academic libraries. In fact, the expense of publishing such free-standing books has made more common in recent years the practiceof releasing celebratory writings as special issues of journals.Nevertheless, the urge to honor leading figures in musicology hasnot ceased, and thus, despite the expense, unique volumes like“… dass alles auch hätte anders kommen können” continue to be pub-lished.

This collection is dedicated to Giselher Schubert on his 65thbirthday in 2009. (It is not called a Festschrift, although it serves thatfunction. Perhaps Dr. Schubert, out of modesty, preferred to avoidsuch a formal honor.) Readers of this Newsletter will know him as amember of the Editorial Board for the Kurt Weill Edition, but Weillforms only one facet of a prolific career that began with a disserta-tion on Schoenberg. Schubert is perhaps better known as theDirector of the Hindemith Institute in Frankfurt a.M., where since1991 he has prepared over twenty editions of Hindemith’s music,edited several volumes of Hindemith’s letters and papers, and over-seen the work of numerous other scholars. More broadly, the cen-tral theme of Schubert’s career has been the music of the twentiethcentury, chiefly the rise of Modernism and especially the concept ofneue Sachlichkeit associated with Hindemith, Weill, and others.Beyond Hindemith, however, Schubert has published over 120 arti-cles and reviews on such composers as Brahms, Reger, Debussy,Delius, Ives, Korngold, Milhaud, Toch, and others, in fields thatrange from music theory and composition through sketch studies todiscussions of editorial principles (an extensive bibliography isgiven on pp. 327–338).

The seventeen items in this volume are nearly all connecteddirectly to Schubert’s own broad interests, and they are arranged inroughly chronological order. These include essays on the com-posers Ernest Chausson, Engelbert Humperdinck, Hans Pfitzner,Max Reger, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Paul Hindemith,Walter Leigh, Kurt Weill, Leonard Bernstein, and MichaelTippett. Still other chapters deal with the writings of TheodorAdorno, the song “Lili Marleen,” and the music of mechanicalbirds.

Diverse as this list might seem, there is a unifying theme of sortshinted at in the volume’s title, drawn from a quotation by the

German philosopher Karl Löwith (1897–1973): “Der Gedanke,dass alles auch hätte anders kommen können, ist nicht hinweg zudenken” (The idea that everything could have turned out different-ly is not to be overlooked) (p. 7). The phrase suggests both the mul-tiplicity of stylistic paths found in twentieth-century music and alsothe variety of ways that an individual piece or perhaps even amoment in time might be reinterpreted in light of new facts orhypotheses. This is not to say that these essays engage merely inwild speculation, but that the history of twentieth-century music isalways open-ended. Thus, the element of “what if ” looms in thebackground of several of these essays.

While anyone concerned with the music of the first half of thetwentieth century should be able to find something worthwhile inthis volume, those interested primarily in Weill’s music will turnfirst to two essays by Stephen Hinton and Kim H. Kowalke.Beyond these items, readers will be guided by their own particularinterests.

For many composers in the early twentieth century, the tech-niques and especially the theories of Richard Wagner were obstaclesthat needed to be overcome one way or another. One thinks imme-diately of Claude Debussy and other French composers whose newdirections in style seem an outright rejection of Wagner. Evenamong Germans of the late nineteenth century, like Strauss,Wagner was as much an impediment as an inspiration, no matterhow close the sonic resemblances. For Weill and his musical com-patriots, roughly two generations later, the issue was less aboutmaterials and techniques than ideas and philosophies. As StephenHinton writes in “Weill Contra Wagner: Aspects of Ambivalence,”by the 1920s, “Wagner embodied the spirit to be denied rather thanignored” (p. 169). “Denial” did not mean complete disengagement,however, so Wagnerian influences continue to turn up throughoutWeill’s career.

Hinton notes that Wagner was part of Weill’s education and citesthe manuscript of a lecture on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg thatWeill gave in his final school year. Around the same time, Weill alsoparticipated in a recital in which he performed from memory the“Liebestod” from Tristan und Isolde, and he later remarked in a let-ter to his brother that “a decent Tristan performance will always besomething special for me.” It was only after Weill switched teach-


ers, from the Wagnerian Humperdinck to the more independentFerruccio Busoni, that he began to distance himself from the“Bayreuth master.” As a young critic, Weill wrote respectfully aboutthe impact of Wagner’s music, but also about its epigonal nature inthe mid-1920s. Yet despite Weill’s public disavowals of Wagner’spoetics, his own music contains occasional references to Wagner,including ironic quotations from Tristan that appear in Aufstieg undFall der Stadt Mahagonny and Die sieben Todsünden. Moreover, thatinfluence did not abate, as Hinton shows with three examples fromWeill’s American years. One Touch of Venus, Street Scene, and LoveLife make use, respectively, of a Wagnerian quotation, leitmotivictechnique, and an elusive reference to a Tristan-esque sonority. AsHinton concludes, Weill was never as clearly anti-Wagnerian assome of his contemporaries, notably Hanns Eisler and Hindemith,and thus Wagner remained a significant influence in Weill’s theatri-cal works, regardless of what he might have written or said.

In contrast to Hinton’s retrospective look at Love Life,Kowalke’s essay, “Today’s Invention, Tomorrow’s Cliché: Love Lifeand the Concept Musical,” examines the show’s later influence onBroadway after a disappointing 1948–49 run. Weill and his lyricist,Alan Jay Lerner, took a novel approach to the structure of the musi-cal show in their only collaboration. The story follows the Coopers,a typical American family, from 1791 to the then-present of 1948.Even as the historical moments in which the story is told progressthrough time, the four family members do not change, but age onlyslightly in each new setting. Framing these scenes is a series ofvaudeville numbers played “in one” (in front of the main curtain)that comment on the lives of the Coopers and reflect on the eco-nomic and social developments of 157 years of American history.The novelty of such an approach, not surprisingly, was a challengefor all involved, and the show closed after 252 performances, notquite a failure, but not having secured a place in the repertoire,either. Weill died less than a year later, Lerner remained funda-mentally indifferent to the show, and so Love Life disappeared, notto be revived for nearly forty years.

Although Love Life was not a commercial success, Kowalkeaffirms the show’s importance in the evolution of Broadwaythrough the effect it had on figures like Michael Kidd, Fred Ebb,Stephen Sondheim, and others. With its non-linear storytelling,Love Life was one of the first “concept” musicals, paving the wayfor Kander and Ebb’s Cabaret, Sondheim’s Company, and similarshows in the 1960s and 70s. Although the ties to later shows are notalways made directly, they may be inferred from Kowalke’s thor-ough description of Love Life, which is most welcome, since theshow has had only four revivals (all since 1987 and all seen byKowalke) and neither a recording nor a score is currently available.Kowalke also notes some of the difficulties that Lerner and Weillfaced during pre-Broadway tryouts, and how an ASCAP embargoand the “Petrillo ban,” both of which prevented commercialrecording and broadcasting of the show’s songs during its run, con-tributed to its failure to win wider fame. Financial or critical suc-cesses at the premiere are not the only measures of a show’s impact,however, and so Kowalke’s essay is a useful corrective to Broadway’susual historical narrative.

Although those are the only two items in this collection con-nected directly with Weill, at least one other essay will demandattention from readers of this Newsletter. The late David Drew, alegendary figure in Weill studies for more than a half century, con-tributed “North Sea Crossings: Walter Leigh, Hindemith, andEnglish Music” to this volume. Prolific as he was, Drew neverthe-less left an immense corpus of unpublished work, and this essay

may have been the last that he sent to the publisher in his lifetime.He examines the brief life of Leigh, who died during World War IIin North Africa only ten days before his 37th birthday, against thebackground of Anglo-Germanic musical interactions in the nine-teenth and early twentieth centuries. Drew focuses on Leigh’s workas an advocate and facilitator for his teacher Hindemith during thelatter’s visits to England in the 1930s, and some of Leigh’s ownworks and his series of lectures on new music at Cambridge are alsodiscussed.

Among the remaining essays, two should appeal particularly toscholars of musical theater and popular song. In his discussion ofLeonard Bernstein’s Candide, Wolfgang Rathert explores issues ofgenre and the tensions between high and low cultures in that work.He concludes by noting that Voltaire’s story of an attempt to findtruth, knowledge, and individual prosperity in an irrational andbrutal world is a thoroughly modern one, especially in light of thehorrors of the twentieth century, a point emphasized by Bernstein’sclosing number, “Make Our Garden Grow.” Albrecht Riethmüller’sstudy of “Lili Marleen” traces the history of that song, composedby Norbert Schultze in 1938 and subsequently recorded by LaleAndersen, forgotten for a few years but then popularized by radiobroadcasts to German troops at the front, where it was also heardand appreciated by Allied soldiers. After the war ended, the songwas used with some frequency to evoke the war, and by the time ofRainer Werner Fassbinder’s film of the same name (1981), the songhad all but achieved the status of a folk song of unknown origin.

The remaining dozen essays cover a wide variety of topics, mostfalling within the first half of the twentieth century and severaldealing with German historiography. Among the more interestingare Susanne Popp’s discussion of two works composed by Regerduring World War I and the tensions between patriotism and purecomposition, and Ann-Katrin Heimer’s study of Humperdinck’sincidental music for Max Reinhardt’s staging of MauriceMaeterlinck’s Der blaue Vogel (L’oiseau bleu). Essays by LaurenzLütteken and Michael Heinemann deal with two of Strauss’soperas—Der Rosenkavalier and the question of its modernity, andthe creation of Friedenstag under Nazi dictatorship—respectively.Still other essays ask for reappraisals of specific works: HermannDanuser for the revised version of Hindemith’s Cardillac and IanKemp for Tippett’s The Mask of Time. Style-critical studiesinclude the late Wolfgang Osthoff ’s look at Stravinsky’s neo-classi-cism after L’histoire du soldat and Herbert Schneider’s somewhatsterile explanation of Chausson’s settings of texts fromMaeterlinck’s Serres chaudes. Three more authors approach theirtopics from an aesthetic or philosophical viewpoint: AndreasEichhorn on Pfitzner’s Palestrina, and Hans-Joachim Hinrichsenand Ferdinand Zehentreiter on the writings of Adorno. The volumeconcludes with Walter Salmen’s essay on mechanical birds andtheir songs, written especially for Schubert, who has a passion forornithology.

Like most Festschriften, this volume taken as a whole lacks a nar-row focus, but that is not a complaint. Readers who dip into the vol-ume for one essay may well find something valuable in another, andin these days of hyper-specialization, that is not a bad thing.

Scott WarfieldUniversity of Central Florida


Recordings

The Stage, A Book & TheSilver Screen(Mother Courage, TheSilent World of HectorMann, Huckleberry Finn)

Duke Special

Reel To Reel R2R4

“It’s at the interfaces between the arts thatthings get interesting,” writes PeterWilson, the Belfast singer-songwriterknown as Duke Special, in his liner notes.Quite so, and inside the handsome retro-packaging of this ambitious three-disc setthe interfacing is even more involved thanthe already well-demarcated title suggests.Behind “the silver screen” lies a book, andbehind “a book” one of twentieth-centurymusic’s most significant figures at the veryend of his career. As for “the stage,” thefirst CD shows Special—a self-confessedtheatrical novice—confronting one of itsgiants.

Anyone familiar with Deborah Warner’sNational Theatre production of MotherCourage will probably already have an opin-ion about his songs for the play, recordedhere, and whether they truly serve the oftenvicious energy of Brecht’s text, or theirprevailing lyrical quality proves a bit too“alienating.” The question is not so impor-tant for judging this disc. One is moststruck on first hearing by the variety ofidioms deployed, from the swaggering strutof Eilif ’s song of the soldier and his wife,through the almost Latin sway of Yvette’s“Song of Fraternization,” to the Cookexpounding on the futility of virtue in brisktango tempo—while through it all MotherCourage peddles a motif of timeless modal-ity over the incessant ostinato of her cart.This remarkable range of styles provides acertain sense of detachment along with itsvivid sense of character, and Special’s lyri-cal gifts show up especially well in thehomespun front-porch guitar of theFarmhouse Song, or in the touching sim-plicity of Courage’s final lullaby over herdead daughter. Though he cites both RufusWainwright and Tom Waits among hisinfluences, his voice is breathier, less edgy

than the former, less lived-in than the lat-ter; at any rate it seems to suit both themusic he writes, with its arching vocal linesand splashes of unexpected (at times almostWeillian) harmony, and the intelligent,vivid, but not excessively raucous quality ofTony Kushner’s translations. Of coursePaul Dessau’s original score better capturesthe play’s innate brutality, but perhapsthere is also a case to be made for counter-pointing it through contrast.

Special reaches “the silver screen” byway of Paul Auster’s novel The Book ofIllusions, which examines—through thestory of David Zimmer, a bereaved NewEngland don who recovers by discovering aforgotten genius of silent cinema—thenature of reality and deception alongside avivid portrayal of grief and the art of com-edy as an agent of its redemption. Zimmerunearths twelve lost movie gems in TheSilent World of Hector Mann, and Specialhas here commissioned eleven contempo-raries to join him in writing a song to matchthe title of each. There is plenty of scopefor their imaginations: Auster sometimesleaves these titles without elaboration,while for others he provides anything fromthe barest outline to a full-blown synopsisof “Mister Nobody” (which promptsSpecial himself to supply a bittersweetelegy for the “old world of train tracks andtramps”). Some of the resulting songs seizeon a given or imagined plot; some (notablyClare Muldaur Manchon’s “You’ll BeDetec tive”) seem more interested in thecharacter of Hector Mann himself, whoconjures laughter with every twitch of hissupremely thespian mustache; others fur-

nish a more abstract response. As a per-former who frequently makes use of thesound of vaudeville and music hall, Specialis more comfortable here than the ThirtyYears War allowed, and the universal use ofpre-rock ’n’ roll styles, with a limitedinstrumental palette centered on clarinetand piano, lends a sense of unity both to thematerial and the conviction of the perfor-mances. Inevitably, the appeal of each songwill vary from listener to listener—but it’sa good bet many will be struck by the tum-bleweed key changes of Réa Curran’s “OldFolks and Cow Pokes” and the impish pas-tiche of “Wanda, Darling of the JockeyClub,” spiked with typical half-rhymesfrom The Divine Comedy’s Neil Hannon.In any event, while having read Auster’snovel probably adds to enjoyment of thedisc, not having read it shouldn’t prove toomuch of a hindrance.

Both these CDs merit further and fullerconsideration than that given here, but inthe present context the “book” disc,though much the shortest (an EP, in effect),is also the most interesting. The five songswritten by Weill and Maxwell Anderson forHuckleberry Finn were left orphaned by thecomposer’s death, and being (like theeponymous hero) a little uncertain of theirroots they are perhaps particular candi-dates for adoption in unlikely quarters.Giving them a disc to themselves grantsthem more prominence than they wouldhave if buried in an anthology; but it alsotrains a spotlight on the presentation.There are no extremes of tempo here (allfive are marked Moderato, although theindication was not Weill’s), and in seeking


to provide a sense of variety in these songs,the performer must not lose sight of theopenness, innocence, and honest simplicitywith which Weill and Anderson imbuedthem. Special’s voice—its color morewhiskey than stout and with a sure andconfident sense of its own identity andintonation—seems well-matched to thematerial in that respect. It’s also clear fromthe outset, unashamedly lacing the boat-man’s warnings that begin “River Chanty”with his native vowels over a distinctlyCeltic-flavored drone, that—in the cause ofuncomplicated and direct expression—heis staying true to his own roots, too.

The set is bookended by the two songsmost directly linked to the Mississippi, andtheir clear, immediate appeal is well ren-dered. “River Chanty” takes on a countryflavor from backing vocals and high pianochicks, while the emphatic and slightlyeffortful keel laid by its triple-time rhythmsuggests—not wholly inappropriately—awork song. Perhaps some of the sense ofthe wonder and mystery of nature con-veyed by the lyric goes missing in theprocess, but the final reprise of the boat-man’s cries is effectively backed by whis-pered spoken echoes of “quarter less twain,mark twain”; like theaters, rivers have theirghosts. The perky “Catfish Song” seems onthe one hand to look back to “I Got Plentyo’ Nuttin’” and on the other, forward to“Bless Your Beautiful Hide”: Special castsits trailing pentatonic lines in duet with thepure, almost boyish, tones of one of hisfemale backing singers over a jauntyaccompaniment flecked with accordion,brass fills, and gurgling clarinet. There isan attractive innocence and sense of fun inthe air.

The three numbers in between, howev-er, show clearer signs that Huckleberry Finnwas intended to be a Broadway show, and aperformer’s way with these aspects of thematerial may be more prone to divide lis-teners. “Apple Jack” is narrative, a lesssophisticated country cousin of “Jenny”and “Dr. Crippen”: like them, it has a vocalline kinked with blue notes and notated inthat mix of even and dotted eighths thatoften suggests swung rhythm. Here themelodic quirks are slightly glossed over,and notwithstanding the presence of saxand trombone, the line stays resolutelystraight (even when written otherwise), tothe point that the narrative loses momen-tum and vividness. We hear again a rigor-ous, almost too obtrusive rhythmic under-tow in the two flanking ballads, both takenresolutely in four where a two-beat allabreve approach might have yielded moreebb and flow. The arrangement of “ThisTime Next Year,” colored with chapelorgan and brass chorale, lends it a touch offervent solemnity, but Special’s vocal seemsa little short-winded and lacking the lastounce of sweep. Huck’s song “Come in,Mornin’,” brightened with a splash ofzither, is beguiling in its simplicity,although the lazy upward stretch of Weill’svocal line is studded with glottal stops andleft a little too fragmented as a result.Though Special stays pretty close to theprinted versions throughout the set, herethe climactic “Come in sun,” where thedistinctive rising fifth of the melody finallyfinds the tonic key, is somewhat fudged (ifnot actually misrepresented); and else-where, the simple scalic third line of “ThisTime Next Year” is replaced with the morechromatic version of its reprise, thereby

forfeiting a potential increase in intensity.While of course such departures are notapparent to the listener without a score,one still might speculate as to whether theydiminish the performance.

It’s true that these songs were left asskeletal drafts, and we will never know whatWeill finally intended for them (orfor Huckleberry Finn as a whole, for thatmatter). As a result, they are sometimescited as inferior, the product of a creativeenergy dimmed by encroaching darkness;but they can also be heard as Weill’s finalaffirmation of his love of wide-open spaces,the sun, and simple ideals enshrined in thecountry he came to call home. In that light,and in spite of incidental quibbles, thisrather individual but sincere new versioncan confidently be asked to make itself athome. This prevailing sense of an honestapproach to the material on these discs ulti-mately unifies the disparate “interfaces” ofthe overall project.

James Holmes

London

The first few measures of the draft of “Catfish Song,” showing only the melody line and initial gestures at harmony, convey the state in which Weill left all five of the

songs for Huckleberry Finn. The original manuscript is held in the Weill-Lenya Papers in the Yale University Music Library.

Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 14, Number 1 13Kur t Weill Newsletter Volume 28, Number 1 13

Music

Zaubernacht

Kurt Weill Edition, Series I, Volume 0Edited by Elmar Juchem and Andrew Kuster

New York: Kurt Weill Foundation for Music; European American Music

Corporation, 2008. 220 pp. (Critical Report 68 pp.)

ISBN: 978-0-913574-65-2

Popular Adaptations 1927–1950

Kurt Weill Edition, Series IV, Volume 2Edited by Charles Hamm, Elmar Juchem,and Kim H. Kowalke

New York: Kurt Weill Foundation for Music; European American Music

Corporation, 2009. 320 pp.

ISBN: 978-0-913574-67-6

I am very grateful to the editors of the Newsletter for inviting me towrite about the two latest volumes of the Kurt Weill Edition: thecritical edition of Zaubernacht, edited by Elmar Juchem andAndrew Kuster (Series I, Volume 0, published 2008); and PopularAdaptations 1927–1950, a representative selection of sheet musicand other versions of Weill’s songs published in his lifetime, pre-sented in facsimile and edited by Charles Hamm, Elmar Juchemand Kim H. Kowalke (Series IV, Volume 2, published 2009). Likethe volumes that precede them in the Edition, these are models ofclarity. The editors provide informative discussions of the sourcematerial on which they are based, the editorial methodologyapplied, and the criteria for specific decisions, all prefaced with illu-minating and meticulously documented Introductions. Such a pre-sentation should appeal equally to at least three constituencies:scholars and performers, who will find the volumes attractive andeasy to navigate; and musically literate listeners will also find thevolumes easy to use, if rather expensive. Finally, the scores them-selves represent a crowning achievement in the modern printing ofmusic.

The two volumes admirably demonstrate the flexibility ofapproach that this collected edition demands. The edition ofZaubernacht is a more traditional kind of publication, based onauthoritative sources in the hand of the composer himself or creat-ed under his direction, all documented with historical precision.The facsimile volume, however, calls on a different set of principles.Edition subscribers will not need the music published in this vol-ume because it will all eventually appear in edited form elsewherein the collection. But the sheet music reproductions testify to thevariety of strategies Weill, in collaboration with his publishers,embraced to promote his music, and more important, the stageworks and films that featured them. This volume will provide theindispensable starting point for research into this aspect of Weill’s

career, and it exemplifies an argument I make throughout TheCritical Editing of Music, that every edition constitutes a specialcase.1

Articles by Elmar Juchem and Suzanne Eggleston Lovejoy inthe Fall 2006 Newsletter recount the recovery of the piano-vocalscore prepared for the 1925 New York production of Zaubernachtand the instrumental parts used for both the New York and the 1922Berlin productions—a cautionary tale indeed, not just for librari-ans, but also for prospective donors, who would hope that their giftsdo not disappear for decades! So the current edition makes availablefor the first time the score of Weill’s first dramatic work, a pan-tomime for children, based on a scenario created by WladimirBoritsch.

Juchem provides in his Introduction much detail aboutBoritsch’s life and creative activities, the genesis of Zaubernacht, itscritical reception at both the Berlin premiere and the New Yorkproduction, and the patronage that made the latter possible.Unfortunately, Juchem does not discuss sources of financial back-ing for the Berlin premiere, although he states, “the productionapparently achieved a considerable degree of professionalism” (p.14). Presumably evidence is lacking; despite Juchem’s extensiveresearch, many mysteries remain. For example, a complete scenariodoes not survive, and the one printed at the end of the CriticalReport (pp. 61–63) was extracted from the piano-vocal score; littleis known about the origin of the German text for the song thatopens the work.

The editors complement this splendid Introduction with a judi-cious selection of plates offering reproductions of musical sources,a playbill from the Berlin premiere and the only known photographof that production. My one reservation concerns the treatment ofWeill himself. Some users of the edition, particularly those who donot specialize in his music, would benefit from more informationabout his professional circumstances in 1922 and more discussionof the relations between this work and his other music composedaround the same time. Weill experts and Newsletter readers may notneed such context, but it would help everyone else.

Turning to the score, we continue to find evidence of the edi-tors’ sound judgment. For example, many cuts were implementedin the Berlin and New York productions. The editors have wiselydecided to print all the musical material and indicate the cuts in theCritical Notes that make up the bulk of the Critical Report. Thus,directors and conductors have all the available music at their dis-posal and may cut according to their own needs and taste. The edi-tors could not fully restore one item, the closing song. The instru-mental parts survive intact, but the only evidence for the vocal lineor lyrics consists of cues in the piano part. As a result, they recon-struct the score as fully as possible in the Critical Report (pp.56–58) and show a suitable cut that would render a performableending.

I would raise a couple of points regarding details of presentationand editorial decisions. First, in accordance with the establishedpractice of the Edition, Juchem and Kuster signal a handful of vari-ant readings in footnotes within the score. The editorial guidelinesfor the Edition state, “Because the notation of editorial activity inthe musical text itself would result in a dense and confusing tangleof markings, documentation in the score is restricted to informationof immediate importance and relevance to performers. In suchcases, a footnote is provided to present the salient facts and to referto the more extended consideration in the critical report.”2 In prac-tice, the footnotes in the score are redundant because they conveyinformation presented in the Critical Report. Perhaps they are


intended to entice readers to turn to this separate volume, in whichcase I find them unnecessary. Even non-scholarly users will find theCritical Report welcoming—better organized and easier to use thanthose of many other editions.3 The lone difference between thefootnotes and the Critical Report is the use of musical notation inthe former, while the latter employs it only for rhythms, not forpitches. Second, the footnotes create some difficulties. Four notes,unfortunately, do not provide measure numbers: p. 131 Br, refer-ring to m. 895; p. 149 Fg, m. 1031; p. 189 strings, m. 1478; and p.210 strings, m. 1668. Clearly, the editors assume that most userswill work from the score to the footnotes, and not the other wayaround.

Finally, two readings require comment. At mm. 83–86 (p. 53),the editors regularize the timpani part to include a staccato mark onthe eighth note that falls on the third beat in each bar. The manu-script percussion part (reproduced as Plate 6, p. 30; also in theNewsletter, Fall 2006, p. 4) provides the staccato in m. 83 alone,omits it in m. 84, and uses the one-bar repeat mark for m. 85 and86. The alternate reading given in the footnote indicates the absenceof the staccato in m. 84 and omits it in mm. 85 and 86, while simul-taneously rebeaming the third beat. The problem with the score,the footnote, and the comments in the Critical Report (p. 18) is thesuppression of the tie that clearly joins the roll on the second beatto the eighth note on the third beat in both mm. 83 and 84. Somewould say that the tie is otiose, but it seems likely that either Weillor the copyist wished to ensure that the roll continued withoutbreak to the inception of the third beat, where (in m. 83 at least) thestaccato occurs.

A second reading is even more puzzling. A significant structur-al articulation occurs at m. 911 (rehearsal letter II) with a cadenceon D major (p. 134). To the pre-cadential chord in m. 910 (p. 133),the editors supply a Dk in the right hand of the piano part from themanuscript parts (Im, discussed in the Critical Report, p. 36, wherethe reference to the third beat of m. 911 must be a misprint for thethird beat of m. 910; the footnote in the score is confusing becauseit does not give the full spelling of the chord, omitting the E in theleft hand of the piano part). Without the Dk, the chord becomes aconventional dominant thirteenth chord in D major with the thir-teenth (Fk) in the top voice (flute and first violin, doubled at theoctave below in the viola and the top voice of the piano) and theleading tone (Ck) in the second highest voice (second violin). TheDk adds an augmented eleventh to the mixture. I do not knowwhether that dissonance is characteristic of Weill’s writing, but itseems strange to me that he would bury so pungent a note in themiddle range of the chord, in the middle voice of the piano, theinstrument with the least distinctive timbre of the ensemble. Theretention of this pitch requires stronger justification than that pro-vided in either the footnote or the Critical Report.

One last point links the Zaubernacht volume with the collectionof facsimiles, namely the question of collaboration between Weilland his various partners. The Foreword that appears in every vol-ume of the Kurt Weill Edition, signed by the Editorial Board(whose members are named in each volume), states, “Works for themusical theater are, to varying degrees, collaborative ventures; moreoften than not, their genesis does not precede but is rather inextri-cably bound up with the process of creative realization for specificevents” (p. 8). They go on to note the complicated interactionsbetween the piece as a composed and performed object, but endtheir treatment of collaboration with this statement: “Editors drawon all available sources relating to the period between the start ofthe production process and the end of the composer’s involvement”

(p. 8). As a policy, this seems reasonable enough, as some of Weill’spieces were mounted later without his participation, even duringhis lifetime, and efforts to treat all the resulting changes couldrapidly become unmanageable. But it does prioritize Weill’s contri-butions to the collaboration.4

Zaubernacht constitutes an interesting example of the applica-tion of this editorial policy. Juchem begins his discussion by char-acterizing it as the “brainchild of its scenarist, Wladimir Boritsch”(p. 13), and the critical reception to the piece certainly confirms thisperception in that it devotes little attention to Weill or his music.Unfortunately, Juchem cannot go far beyond this assertion becauseof the lack of surviving source material, most notably, as mentionedabove, a complete scenario. The tension between the editorial poli-cy mentioned above and the sources of Zaubernacht becomes palpa-ble, however, with the treatment of the New York production of1925, mounted without Weill’s participation by Boritsch after hisemigration to the United States. Strictly speaking, Juchem andKuster should ignore the materials that properly belong to this pro-duction, specifically the piano-vocal score prepared for it.

Those sources, however, indicate that this production incorpo-rated numerous cuts, and, instead of ignoring them, the editorshandle these changes differently from those associated with theBerlin production. “Conversely, revisions to Im [manuscript parts]written in English or otherwise known to have been made for theNew York performance are not incorporated in the Edition and aredescribed in critical notes only when they may inform readingsbased on more privileged sources” (Critical Report, pp. 10–11).“Cuts by later hands in Vm [manuscript piano-vocal score] (whichmay also appear in Im and Vh [autograph piano-vocal score]) weremade for the New York performance without Weill’s input; theirlocations are indicated only in the critical notes” (CR, p. 13).

These statements steer a middle path between the concept ofcollaboration as expressed by the Editorial Board and Juchem him-self, and the policy of the Editorial Board to consider only thosesources that demonstrate the direct participation of the composer.By placing the New York sources on a decidedly lower tier, the edi-tors of this volume devalue the contribution of Boritsch to thepiece’s genesis. If, however, the cuts and revisions undertaken forthe New York production were executed either by Boritsch himselfor with his knowledge (nothing contradicts this assumption), and ifthe piece is really his “brainchild” (Juchem), and if music theaterreally is collaborative (the Editorial Board), then these cuts andrevisions should receive the same treatment as any that occurredduring the Berlin production. The remedy I would suggest is min-imal: a separate list of those cuts and revisions in the CriticalReport so that scholars and those interested in mounting a produc-tion could consult them all together in one place instead of havingto excavate them from the Critical Notes.

Collaboration also figures largely in the other volume consid-ered here, Popular Adaptations. In place of the author Boritsch, wehave a legion of lyricists, arrangers, publishers and song pluggers towhom I shall turn presently. The main body of the volume presentsphotographic facsimiles of some thirty-eight songs in arrangementsand adaptations, nearly all from Weill’s music theater pieces. Thereare some real gems here, such as the signed and annotated presen-tation copy of “Bilbao-Song” from Happy End he sent to T. W.Adorno, an arrangement of “Zu Potsdam unter den Eichen” fromBerliner Requiem for male chorus, and “Barbarasong” from DieDreigroschenoper printed in the Berlin weekly Jede Woche Musik, aswell as some disappointments, like the absence of “Moritat vonMackie Messer,” also from Die Dreigroschenoper and probably his


most famous song (although it does appear in a potpourri from thework published in the collection Musikalische Edelsteine) and thelascivious “Jenny” from Lady in the Dark.

The editors present all these in full-size reproductions, includ-ing front and back covers, inside and outside. They also provide fullbibliographic and copyright data, as well as full-color reproductionsof the covers of all known publications of these popular adaptationsissued during Weill’s lifetime in reduced size, but extremely valu-able nevertheless. Bibliographers will especially appreciate that theeditors identify the specific copies used for the reproductions, adetail that scholars sometimes overlook when dealing with printedsources.

All this visual material provides a rich overview of the publica-tion history of these songs, including the cover art and advertising.These tell a tale about the presentation and promotion of the music,a subject Hamm addresses in passing in his essay, but does not dis-cuss fully. To be fair to Hamm, the essay, which Kowalke andHinton aptly judge “magisterial” (p. 14), concentrates with greatsuccess on historical and musical issues, drawing on the author’sprofound knowledge of American music from mid-century.5 So, farfrom faulting Hamm for not dealing with the visual material inmore detail, I suggest it remains a fruitful area for exploration. Forexample, the advertising in the first few publications fromUniversal-Edition indicates Weill’s increasing popularity from thesuccess of Die Dreigroschenoper. The first two back covers (from“Alabama-Song” and “Tango-Ballade,” pp. 96 and 101, respective-ly) list a “selection from the catalogue” in which Weill’s music bare-ly figures. (The back cover of “Alabama-Song” shows one piece byWeill, Frauentanz Op. 10; the “Tango-Ballade” none at all.) Theback cover of “Kanonen-Song,” conversely, lists only Weill’s music(p. 106). This volume, then, will greatly facilitate further researchin this area.

I return now to Weill’s collaborators in these publications inorder to address what appears to be a certain level of discomfort onthe part of those responsible for the volume. Kowalke and Hintonstate that the impact of these adaptations “has given rise to all man-ner of misconceptions about Weill’s music” (p. 13). Their principalobjection would seem to stem from Weill’s aim to integrate hissongs fully into their dramatic contexts. Outside those contexts, thesongs make little sense. Concomitantly, Kowalke, Hinton, andHamm (in the Introduction), stress that Weill had no ambition towrite hit songs. All these points are well-taken in that Weill sawhimself as primarily a composer of musical theater.

Nevertheless, all three admit, and Hamm offers detailed docu-mentation, that Weill went to some trouble to ensure that his pub-lishers issued and promoted the sheet music for these songs extract-ed from their dramatic contexts. Hamm shows that he embracedthis strategy with Die Dreigroschenoper (pp. 44–45) and continuedthrough his American period (pp. 73–74 on the songs from Lost inthe Stars). Weill or his publishers delegated arrangers to prepare hissongs, detached from their dramatic functions, for publication: theysimplified melodic and harmonic elements, streamlined the formsand rendered the piano accompaniments playable by amateurs, allto encourage sales of the sheet music and to promote both the songsand the shows and films that featured them. Whatever “misconcep-tions” may have arisen from these publications, Weill was a willingparticipant in them.

Hamm touches on the issue of revenue, which may illuminateWeill’s motivations for encouraging such publication of his music.Hamm shows that Weill realized relatively little income from royal-ties on sheet music sales or from performing rights fees collected by

ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, andPublishers), but earned the bulk of his income from royalties accru-ing from theatrical productions of his shows and the sale of theirmotion picture rights (pp. 74–75). Why, then, should Weill devoteso much energy to these publications if the potential income was someager and they so significantly compromised the artistic integrityof his music? I believe the answer lies in the structure of these rev-enue streams.

The publication of these songs promoted the shows of whichthey formed a part, as the cover art unequivocally demonstrates. Invirtually every case, the name of the show figures prominently onthe cover, sometimes in larger print even than the title of the song,and always more conspicuously than the name of the composer orany of his collaborators. Moreover, for many of the shows, the pub-lisher designed a single cover used for each song from the show,changing only the song title in each case. Thus, promotion of theshow took precedence over promotion of the individual song.Increased sales of sheet music and exposure of the songs on theradio would lead to higher ticket sales and, ultimately, more incomefor Weill. One might also argue that greater attendance allowedmore people to hear Weill’s music as he intended it, as an integralpart of the drama.

The second stream of income—the performing rights fees col-lected by ASCAP—raises more complications. Hamm offers somedetails in his study of American popular music, Yesterdays.6 Briefly,ASCAP collected fees for public performances of songs, includingradio and film presentations, which it then distributed to the com-posers, lyricists, and publishers that it represented. So, when Weillreports that he heard “My Ship” and “Jenny” from Lady in theDark playing “all day long” on the radio (p. 63), he was also hear-ing the cash register ringing over at ASCAP. But here, the structureof the ASCAP distribution becomes a significant factor. ASCAPpaid half its fee to the publisher, while the songwriter and lyricistreceived the balance, usually divided equally. So, Weill receivedonly 25% of the ASCAP payout on any one of his songs, another25% going to the lyricist, and the rest to the publisher. The incomeof $38,000 Hamm reports Weill received from ASCAP for the peri-od 1941–50 (p. 74) thus represents a total payout approaching$160,000 for all parties.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Irving Berlin, and manyothers since, formed their own publishing companies, not for thepurpose of publishing the sheet music, which they could job out tocommercial publishers and printers, but to collect the publisher’sshare of the performing rights fee.7 Berlin, of course, also wrote thelyrics for most of his songs, and so for those, he received 100% ofthe performing rights fee. To estimate the kind of money on thetable, adjusting for inflation as necessary, we need only consider thefate of the Northern Songs catalogue, consisting of most of theBeatles’ songs written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, forwhich Michael Jackson famously outbid McCartney, and whichformed, in the various refinancing deals negotiated betweenJackson and Sony Music, the key asset.

Weill, however, needed to generate four times as much incomefrom ASCAP in order to receive the same payout as Berlin becausehe did not control his own publishing. That situation, I believe,explains in large part Weill’s insistence that publishers and songpluggers promote his work. Everyone involved had to work muchharder for Weill to get anything approaching the same return asBerlin. I suspect the distribution of the performing rights fees alsolay behind Weill’s attempts to establish his own publishing compa-ny for Lost in the Stars (p. 73). One would like to know more about

16 Volume 14, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter16 Volume 28, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter

Performances

the arrangement and whether it materially affected his income forthat show. High Tor Music, the name of Weill’s company, does notappear on the cover of the large-format publications of the songsfrom that show, but only on the smaller-format arrangements.Weill, therefore, needed the active participation of all these collab-orators, lyricists, arrangers, publishers, and song pluggers to pro-mote these songs for the purpose of attracting larger audiences tothe shows themselves and to generate income.

Just as Charles Hamm does in his essay, I cede to Lotte Lenyathe last word. “You hear it coming out of bars, juke boxes, taxis,wherever you go. Kurt would have loved that. A taxi driverwhistling his tunes would have pleased him more than winning thePulitzer Prize” (p. 76). If she is not describing a hit song, I’m sureI don’t know what she’s describing.

James Grier

University of Western Ontario

Notes

1. James Grier, The Critical Editing of Music: History, Theory, and Practice

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).2. “Kurt Weill Edition,” in Editionsrichtlinien Musik: Im Auftrag der

Fachgruppe Freie Forschungsinstitute in der Gesellschaft für Musikforschung,Musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 30 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2000), p. 419.

3. See the comments of Philip Brett, “Text, Context, and the Early MusicEditor,” in Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium, ed. Nicholas Kenyon(Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 97–98.

4. The editors of Peer Gynt in the Grieg edition sought to establish a textthat realized the composer’s ideal for the score, regardless of issues that arosein the various productions that took place during Grieg’s lifetime. See FinnBenestad and Rune Andersen, “A Case Study: Peer Gynt, Op. 23,” in NordicMusic Editions: Symposium 1–2 September 2005, ed. Niels Krabbe(Copenhagen: The Royal Library, 2006), pp. 51–57.

5. I would offer one historical correction. In discussing the reception ofThe Firebrand of Florence, Hamm states, “Perhaps the relative lack of successof The Firebrand of Florence, and of the songs extracted from it, may have hadsomething to do with the fact that spring 1945 was hardly a propitious timefor a frothy costume piece set in Italy, with which the United States was stillat war and where some of the most deadly fighting had taken place” (p. 68).No one would argue with the last statement, but Italy had been aligned withthe Allies since the armistice of September 1943 and so was no longer anenemy.

6. Charles Hamm, Yesterdays: Popular Song in America (New York:Norton, 1979), p. 339.

7. Hamm, Yesterdays, p. 334.

Severin (Daniel Frank) develops a thirst for revenge in Act II. Photo: Mats Bäcker

Der Silbersee

FolkoperanStockholm

Premiere: 23 February 2010

In creating works for the musical stage,Weill always strove for drama that succeedson musical, literary, and theatrical levelswhile forming a coherent whole, and hishigh standards can be difficult to meetwhen staging his works. This applies notleast to Der Silbersee, first performed in1933, a peculiar hybrid in almost everyrespect. This play requires performers withgreat acting skills who can also sing at avery high level. It’s not just a matter offinding the right performers. The hybridnature of the work is traceable in thematicand dramaturgical aspects, in GeorgKaiser’s dialogue, and perhaps most of allin musical and stylistic aspects.

Music and Drama in Gothenburg in thefall of 2009. Folkoperan, founded in 1976,originally made its name by taking a moreadventurous approach than Stockholm’sestablished Royal Swedish Opera. In somerespects, the distinctions between the two

Nevertheless, Folkoperan in Stockholmmade this surprising choice for its springseason. This production is part of whatmight be labeled a small Silbersee boom inSweden, since the piece was also staged as astudent production at the Academy of


houses have not persisted, but it seemsunlikely that a more traditional housewould have had the courage to take on thisrather risky piece. By performing the workin Swedish (translated by Iwar Bergkwist),the company makes it somewhat less intim-idating.

In Stockholm, the vocal roles were alltaken by opera singers, if we don’t countthe part of Olim, who sings only once.Torkel Petersson handled that momentimpressively, and he rendered a very sensi-tive Olim, with a good deal of broad, phys-ical acting for contrast. Edita Stundyte’schoreography sometimes seemed to parody

popular dances of the 1920s and often hada slapstick feel. Petersson offered somespectacular and seemingly hazardous acro-batics on the large metal structure thatcompletely dominates the set designed byPeter Lundquist. This structure, composedof a central spiral staircase and severalstraight staircases with intermediate plat-forms on either side of the stage, serves asthe castle of Olim during the central part ofthe play but works more as a symbolicdevice at the beginning and at the end(when Olim and Severin did not cross thelake, but instead climbed to the top of thestairs, each on his own side, where they

stood next to each other, still separated by adoor).

Olim’s antagonist, and ultimately coun-terpart, was played by tenor Daniel Frank,who made a most convincing Severin bothvocally and dramatically. He sang the aria,“Erst trifft dich die Kugel,” with magnifi-cent precision, yet every syllable boiledwith rage; in the Odysseus aria, hisapproach was more cautious and tentative.Both times his performance matched textand music perfectly.

Fennimore is no doubt one of Weill’smost complex characters: the poor, bulliedniece, the involuntary seductress, the revo-lutionary of “Cäsars Tod,” the loyal helperwho reunites Severin with his comrades,and ultimately the visionary voice of theFinale. Soprano Ulrika Mjörndal handledthe difficult part remarkably, bringinghuman warmth, steady conviction, andvocal brilliance to her performance.

For Frau von Luber, costume designerKajsa Larsson created an obvious but effec-tive contrast with Fennimore. The cos-tume, complemented by mezzo-sopranoUlrika Tenstam’s acting, made Frau vonLuber into some sort of demon, visuallyresembling Morticia Addams of theAddams Family. Tenstam’s deliberatelyexaggerated acting style almost overempha-sized her villainy.

Lithuanian director Oskaras Koršu -novas (working through an interpreter)seems to have been most successful atimparting detailed instructions to the cast,and as a theatrical whole this performanceworked magnificently. He added onedevice: big projection screens to displayimages and film clips that comment on theaction. However, thanks to Torkel Blom -kvist’s lighting, which effectively focusedon the singers, these projections did notdistract the audience too much.

It is utopian to believe that many operahouses will follow the Folkoperan in daringto stage Der Silbersee. But this productionpresents utterly convincing evidence thatthe difficulties inherent in this piece can besurmounted, and with excellent results.

Esbjörn Nyström

Tartu

Olim (Torkel Petersson) performs acrobatics on the staircase for the benefit of Frau von Luber (Ulrika

Tenstam). Photo: Mats Bäcker

18 Volume 14, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter18 Volume 28, Number 1 Kur t Weill Newsletter

Performances

One Touch of Venus

Anhaltisches Theater Dessau

Premiere: 5 March 2010

Although One Touch of Venus, Weill’s solemusical comedy, has been performed inGermany several times since its 1994German premiere, its production as thecenterpiece of the 2010 Kurt Weill FestDessau marks an important event in thecontinuing reclamation and legitimation ofKurt Weill, the Broadway composer. Giventhe checkered history in Weill’s homelandof musical comedy (as opposed to operettaand megamusicals), Venus was a bold choiceto begin the tenure of the new Intendantsof the theater, André Bücker (who selectedit), and of the festival, Michael Kaufmann.Yet against all odds, the production, direct-ed by Klaus Seiffert with musical directionby James Holmes, managed to capture agood deal of the spirit of Weill at his mostamerikanisch. (Venus’s first number, “I’m aStranger Here Myself,” has beenenshrined—for better or worse—as theminor-key theme song of Weill’s years inexile.)

Originally mounted in 1943, Venus,about the return to earth of the Goddess ofLove, is unmistakably in the tradition ofthe late 1930s masterpieces of Rodgers andHart and Cole Porter, and Weill according-ly uses the standard verse-refrain form(with embedded release) more frequently

in Venus than in most of his otherpieces. Centered on the discoveryand loss of love, Venus achieves analmost startling depth in Weill’sbittersweet settings of OgdenNash’s witty, emotionally chargedlyrics. The play is both silly andsophisticated, trivial and richlyevocative. Its story of a protago-nist who journeys far from herhomeland clearly suited the tensewartime mood, and it became thelongest running of Weill’sBroadway shows. With its decep-tively light comedy and score,Venus might just be the greatestmusical Cole Porter never wrote.

Unlike many German produc-tions of American plays (or theKomische Oper’s unfortunateMahagonny that I saw the nightbefore), Venus was staged relative-ly traditionally, its book scenes realisticallyacted (in German) and its songs performed(in English) in the presentational style longassociated with musical comedy. (Therewere supposed to have been Germansupertitles but they were not operational onopening night.) Holmes’s musical directionwas wonderfully idiomatic—the songs andballets were beautifully shaped—while per-haps the greatest thrill of the evening washearing Weill’s original orchestrations in alltheir glory. It was worth the trip to Dessaujust to hear the luscious, seductive synco-pations in the low strings in the accompani-ment to the show’s best-known song,“Speak Low.”

Besides Holmes, the two greatest assetsof the production were the Austrian sopra-no, Ute Gfrerer, as Venus and Australian-born tenor, Angus Wood, as her barber

suitor, Rodney Hatch. Gfrerer is a marvel.A vibrant actress and fine musician with aclean, evenly produced tone, she consis-tently used her head voice to magical effectwhile avoiding the belting to which toomany popular singers resort to signal inten-sity or earthiness. Her English is excellent,and her gracefully nuanced performance of“That’s Him” was unforgettable. WhileWood may not quite be her match dramat-ically, he sang with precision and ardor.The two other principals, Ulf Paulsen asSavory and Ulrike Mayer as Molly, wereless comfortable with the Broadway idiomand tended to overplay their hands. Butthey were clearly local favorites and wereenthusiastically applauded by an audiencethat knew it was witnessing an importantcultural event.

If I leave a discussion of the mise-en-scène to last, it is because it was the mostproblematic and uneven aspect of the show.Although Seiffert clearly understands theconventions of musical comedy, he wassaddled with a set design which, except fora couple of scenes, was frankly ugly and farless workable than it should have been. Tobe fair, the designer, Imme Kachel, optedto use the theater’s turntable, which facili-tated rapid scene changes but mandatedthat all the settings be the same size, fromthe main gallery of a spacious museum toRodney’s humble flat. The unattractivesets, moreover, were too brightly andfrontally lit which accentuated their bill-board-like two-dimensionality. Kachel wasmore successful with her costumes which,except for Savory’s iridescent burgundy

Rodney (Angus Wood) with Venus (Ute Gfrerer). Photo: Thomas

Ruttke

“Forty Minutes for Lunch” ballet. Photo: Thomas Ruttke


suit, nicely suggested the early 1940s asimagined by musical comedy. The mostconsistently successful part of the mise-en-scène was the choreography by MarioMariano, which accomplished the nearlyimpossible task of evoking Agnes de Mille’suniquely highbrow-meets-lowbrow stylethat was a highlight of the original produc-tion. The ballets, “Forty Minutes forLunch” and “Venus in Ozone Heights,”the interludes of neoclassical dance for theOlympian pantheon, as well as the first-actfinale, the arty melodrama “Dr. Crippen,”were among the best realized parts of theproduction. Throughout, Mariano’s juxta-position of different ballet styles with1940s popular dance idioms succeeded ingiving the production real vitality and peri-od flair. Besides the theater’s well-trainedcorps de ballet, much of the dancing andchoral singing was ably performed by ahighly skilled cohort of students from theMusicals Department of the Universitätder Künste Berlin.

Although a substantial part of Weill’sgenius was his knack for rethinking, revis-ing, and sometimes undermining the con-ventions of music theater, both in Germanyand the United States, One Touch of Venusis unique in its insistent and subtle disrup-tion of the formulas of musical comedy.Using the song types common to 1940smusicals (ballads, novelty songs, charmsongs, etc.), Weill equivocates restlesslybetween major and minor modes and usesdistinctive accompaniment figures moreboldly than his contemporaries, all thewhile ensuring that Venus remains unmis-

takably a musical comedy. Opening sixmonths after Oklahoma!, it differs fromthat musical (denounced by Lenya as “thatHillbilly show”) by its insistent modernity.Savory’s museum, after all, is a foundationdevoted to modern art, and on the stage ofthe Anhaltisches Theater, the museumwalls were hung with fake Kandinskys andPicassos. There was an unmistakableincongruity in the return to Dessau (whichis also the site of the Bauhaus) of one ofWeill’s wartime musicals, playing in a the-ater building with a brutally neo-classicalfaçade that opened in 1938 with Hitler andGoebbels in attendance.

If the Anhaltisches Theater epitomizesa kind of nostalgic, regressive modernismthat seeks to reinvent the architecturalpractices of ancient Greece and Rome, thenOne Touch of Venus must be seen as its pro-

gressive antithesis. Like so many modernistplays, it takes as its theme the displacedmodern subject (“I’m a stranger heremyself ”), epitomized by a goddess/humanwho also happens to be a statue, an inani-mate object. And both the ballets are aboutthe hazards and anxieties of living in amodern world that depersonalizes andstandardizes human beings, turning theminto machines, ejected from office build-ings and “swirl[ing] mechanically about,their faces strained and abstracted,” andliving side by side in identical suburbanhouses like sardines in a can. Not only theplay’s narrative but also Weill’s score dra-matize this modernist conundrum. “FortyMinutes for Lunch,” after all, represents amodernist refiguration of “Stranger HereMyself,” the latter’s pungent, syncopatedrhythms turned into machine-like ostinatosabove which soars a sweet harmonization ofVenus’s song. Weill was not the first writerto use Broadway as a forum for advancingthe cause of a modernist music theater, butno one before or after has done so withsuch power, grace, and ingenuity. That OneTouch of Venus should finally find a home ina theater that is a mediocre example ofFascist architecture is one of the count-less—and bitterest—ironies in the contin-uing and long overdue reclamation of theBroadway Weill in the country of his birth.

David Savran

The Graduate Center, CUNY

Interlude danced by the Ballettensemble des Anhaltischen Theaters. Photo: Thomas Ruttke

Gloria (Kristina Baran), Mrs. Kramer (Ulrike Hoffmann), and Rodney (Angus Wood) at the bus station.

Photo: Thomas Ruttke


Performances

Street Scene

Opéra de Toulon

Premiere: 12 March 2010

Weill composed Der Jasager and Down inthe Valley deliberately as “school” operas,but a case can be made that Street Scenebelongs in the same category, and not onlybecause its large cast makes it ideal for stu-dent productions. The mix of musical andperforming styles that Weill deployed arechoice ingredients in the melting pot thatwas—in his day—the American musicaltheater, but that are now increasingly unfa-miliar to performers and audiences alike,especially in other countries. “Wouldn’tYou Like to Be on Broadway?” is more thana come-on, it’s a razzmatazz showstopperof a kind that most people don’t know howto put across. But they can learn by doing,and Street Scene is chock-full of suchlessons.

The French do know a few show tunesas jazz riffs, but in their original context,the same songs yield mixed results, aswe’ve seen in a spate of recent national pre-mieres of works by Bernstein (Candide andOn the Town), Rodgers (The Sound ofMusic), and Sondheim (A Little Night

Music), all at the Théâtre du Châtelet inParis. Opéra de Lyon introduced Frenchaudiences to Weill’s One Touch of Venus(2006) and Lady in the Dark (2008); nowOpéra de Toulon has mounted France’sfirst Street Scene. Stage direction of allthese shows has suffered to varying degreesfrom a typically European excess of “con-cept” that either mistrusts the originalwork or misses its point, and that confusesNew York and Hollywood performingstyles (the latter being relatively familiarhere, the former largely unknown) whilefailing to integrate them with local conven-tions. Musical direction has labored tominimize the damage. Weill’s works com-pound the challenges, because his scoresembrace such a variety of styles, and this isespecially true of Street Scene.

Toulon’s production gave the book andlyrics in the original language, and so, formost of the local artists, just getting thewords out took precedence over stylisticniceties. The audience’s eyes fixed on theprojected titles (in excellent French trans-lation), and sometimes mine did, too, whenfamiliar lines proved unrecognizable.Engaging several native English speakersfor the cast, including a number of veteransof a recent British production, helped keepthe show moving, but it also squanderedthe educational opportunity.

Conductor Scott Stroman, who tookthe helm successfully for Lyon’s Venus andLady, gave further proof of his uncannycomprehension of Weill’s music. Perhapsbecause, like Weill, Stroman hails from two

nations (the U.S. and Britain) and from twomusical traditions (jazz and classical), heavoids the rigid dichotomies that have sooften conditioned the commonplace viewof Weill; Stroman is more interested inuniting “the two Weills” than in isolatingthem. That there are dozens of Weills—and also just one—demonstrates the neces-sity of Stroman’s approach. Indeed, whileI’ll always regret that Weill didn’t live longenough to refine his vision of “Broadwayopera,” Stroman’s interpretation left mefeeling that the composer came awfullyclose to hitting the mark the first time.

As expected, Stroman played the hellout of “Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed,” open-ing wide a fiery furnace, then pulling backat the last minute to let us cool down. Moresurprising was his sensitivity in the quasi-verismo portions of the score, his attentionto nuance and to lyrical sweep. Numbersthat sometimes strike me as perfunctory ormanipulative here revealed refreshing sin-cerity and poignancy. “Remember That ICare,” an almost conventionally “pretty”song that never elicited any emotional reac-tion stronger than impatience from me,brought tears to my eyes; LangstonHughes’s on-the-nose lyrics never seemedmore truthful. All the while, Stromanrespected the composer’s instinct for dra-matic irony, too. Sam and Rose share noth-ing but a street address and the desire tomove away from it; their love is doomed,because they really don’t belong together.Stroman and English soprano RubyHughes’s wistful reading made clear thatRose sees this from the start.

Stroman’s performance was undercutsomewhat by the Toulon Opera orchestra.Like the Opéra de Lyon ensemble, fromwhom Stroman coaxed such superb playingfor Lady and Venus, the Toulonnais per-form a varied repertoire; ultimately, howev-er, they’re a less polished ensemble. Theymanaged a tight-knit, proficient reading,with only occasional lapses (“Ain’t It Awful,the Heat”), but generally ignored the con-ductor’s efforts to modulate the volume.Several singers who attempted dynamicshadings were drowned out for their pains.It didn’t help that stage director OlivierBénézech and set designer Valérie Jungpushed the tenement façade far upstage.

Generally, Bénézech doesn’t seem tohave fully grasped the work’s stylistic foun-dation, which didn’t keep him from chip-ping away at it, and he tried too hard toenliven the work’s urban realism. In the“Ice Cream” sextet, for example, a fullyThe “Ice Cream” Sextet. Photo: Olivier Pastor


stocked soda counter sailed onstage, andthe cast juggled gigantic plastic ice creamcones while wearing even bigger plastichamburger hats. (This number wasn’t funenough already?) And while dressing HarryEaster in top hat and tails for “Wouldn’tYou Like to Be on Broadway?” was a nicetouch, Bénézech pushed the fantasy too farshortly afterwards when Emma Jonesentered, dressed as Marilyn Monroe in TheSeven Year Itch. “Wrapped in a Ribbon”came off as sappy, because the audiencewasn’t forced to confront its terrible irony:a celebration on the eve of the Hildebrandfamily’s eviction. Bénézech seemed not tounderstand this plot point, or much of any-thing else that drives Street Scene: the dif-ferent worlds of nighttime and daytime,New York summer heat, Maurrant’s alco-holism, etc.

Nowhere did the director exploit theseemingly obvious artistic ties betweenElmer Rice’s book and the classic Frenchfilms of the 1930s. Marcel Carné’s L’Hôteldu Nord, for example, could provide a com-plete blueprint for Street Scene’s tragicom-ic urban architecture. And particularly inToulon, a Mediterranean port city that hasseen waves of immigration and of hardtimes, this opera’s depiction of an ethnical-ly mixed, economically challenged commu-nity might have resonated strongly—hadBénézech paid more attention to it.

To no particular effect, Jung’s unit setmixed images of present-day skyscrapersand an architectural drawing with a rela-tively realistic brownstone façade. FrédéricOlivier’s costumes ranged from apt (EmmaJones’s print dress) to cartoonish (GeorgeJones’s undershirt and moustache) towrongheaded (too many coats for a heatwave). Régis Vigneron’s lighting schemecontributed little to the atmosphere.

Thus it was left to individual perform-ers to bring shape and clarity to StreetScene as a stage work; most succeeded bet-ter with the music than with the drama.Though the director encouraged Britishsoprano Elena Ferrari to indulge in abroadly declamatory acting style that haddisappeared from Broadway long beforeWeill’s day, she revealed soaring purity andemotional conviction in her singing. As“Franck” Maurrant, French baritoneLaurent Alvaro boasted passable English;under Stroman’s guidance, he delivered“Let Things Be Like They Always Was”with a tender lyricism that helped to fleshout the underdeveloped, under-directedcharacter. (To make Maurrant something

more than a plot device, it would help toseason his brutishness with a dash ofScarpia-like charm or of Sophocleandoom.) Ferrari and Alvaro returned at theend of the opera as prospective tenants forthe Hildebrands’ vacant apartment; sincethey still looked like the Maurrants, thiswas jarring.

Several roles were double-cast, mostdaringly—and successfully—in the case ofsinging virgin Jenny Hildebrand and danc-ing tramp Mae Jones. French sopranoAmélie Munier turned these characters’contrasting scenes into a mini-SevenDeadly Sins. (Sadly, Caroline Roëlands isyet another choreographer who doesn’tknow or doesn’t care that “Moon-Faced” isa jitterbug.) Sébastien Lemoine’s HarryEaster pleasingly channeled GeorgesGuétary in An American in Paris (notBroadway, but close); fey, tongue-tiedFrenchman Thomas Morris bungled thehitherto foolproof “When a Woman Has aBaby.” Young Jonathan Manzo, as Willie,and the “specialized children’s chorus” ofthe CNR Toulon Provence Méditerranéestruggled hardest with their English buthad evident fun in the “Games” number.

As Henry Davis, American LawrenceCraig mustered a winning “I Got a Marbleand a Star” but, like Ferrari, inhabited hischaracter only sporadically. By contrast,English soprano Charlotte Page relishedevery second of Emma Jones’s deliciousodiousness, showcasing a smart Brooklynaccent, deft timing, and a lush, agile voice;

she managed to be equally funny and com-pletely different as one of the Nursemaids.

Ruby Hughes made a timid, homelyMrs. Hildebrand but a vibrant RoseMaurrant who combined willowy beautywith crystalline diction, shimmering color,and characterful phrasing often lost underthe crush of the orchestra. Hers was one ofthe more affecting renderings of this roleI’ve witnessed and, with Page’s Mrs. Jones,the evening’s most satisfying performance.Australian tenor Adrian Dwyer has playedSam before, but his interpretation wentawry; Sam isn’t a fraidy-cat, he’s a firebrandbookworm, scion of revolutionaries, andthe play’s social conscience. Dwyer didn’tgive us any of that in his acting, and in hissinging, he let his voice ring free only in“Lonely House.”

I left simultaneously applauding andregretting the company’s courageous deci-sion to use the original English: both audi-ence and cast had to work much too hard.If the Germans perform this opera intranslation, can’t the French? To judgefrom the projected titles in Toulon, therewas at least the start of a good French textavailable. Yet the packed house and general-ly enthusiastic response on opening nightconfirmed that much of the work’s appealcame across—and underscored StreetScene’s power to communicate its lessonsfar from its Broadway birthplace.

William V. Madison

Paris

Mae Jones (Amélie Munier) and Dick McGann (Djamel Mehnane) in “Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed.”

Photo: Olivier Pastor


Performances

Four Walt Whitman Songs

Douglas Webster, baritonePacific SymphonyCarl St.Clair, conductorCosta Mesa, California

4–6 February 2010

According to musicologist RichardTaruskin, the existence of national traits inmusic does not constitute nationalism.Rather, nationalism is an attitude.American nationalism served as the focusfor the 2010 Pacific Symphony’s annualAmerican Composers Festival celebrating“The Greatest Generation,” a term denot-ing those who grew up during the GreatDepression and lived through World WarII. To illustrate predominant attitudes thatdefined this period—thrift, sacrifice,strength in adversity, and the urge to movethe country forward—artistic advisorJoseph Horowitz created an effective pro-gram for the festival’s centerpiece featuringmusic by Aaron Copland, BernardHerrmann, Kurt Weill, and MortonGould, ending with a newly commissionedwork by Michael Daugherty.

The Pacific Symphony took this oppor-tunity to salute World War II veterans fromthe community. The audience includedoctogenarians decked out in military uni-forms accompanied by proud family mem-bers. Photographs of these veterans takenduring their time in military service wereprojected above the orchestra during muchof the concert. These visual representa-tions, along with the playing and singing of“The Star-Spangled Banner,” gave theproceedings an immediate context andemotional connection to historic events.

The first three works on the programfeatured responses by composers to theattack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequentAmerican mobilization. Conductor CarlSt.Clair perfectly pitched his reading ofCopland’s Fanfare for the Common Man(1942) to the sentiments of the evening. Heeschewed the brash and bombastic inter-pretations common in recent years for oneof introspection and respect—more honorthan celebration. St.Clair segued almostimmediately into Herrmann’s For the

Fallen, a work commissioned by the Leagueof Composers for the New YorkPhilharmonic in 1943.

The program seemed to be built aroundthe West Coast premiere of the orchestralversion of Weill’s Four Walt WhitmanSongs, which closed the first half of theevening. Kim H. Kowalke has demonstrat-ed the relationship between these settingsand Weill’s stage works: “Like virtuallyevery one of his works for the stage, theWhitman Songs are hybrids, negotiating thenotoriously ill-defined boundaries between‘serious’ and ‘popular,’ . . . ‘cultivated’ and‘vernacular’ . . . . Not ‘rousing’ enough tobe patriotic anthems, not ‘folklike’ enoughto be baubles of Americana, and not ‘arty’enough to stand next to sets of Schumannand Brahms.”

This hybrid nature becomes all themore apparent when comparing the pianoversion and the orchestral version. Thesongs fit fairly comfortably in the art songtradition when performed with piano. Theaccompaniment is spare and supportive,and the lyrics take on added intimacy. WithWeill’s orchestrations, however, the cycle istransformed into a broader humanitarianand patriotic statement communicatedforcefully within a sound world particular-ly reminiscent of Johnny Johnson and StreetScene.

Of the four Whitman texts, Weill com-posed three in 1942 for voice and piano:“Oh Captain! My Captain!,” “Beat! Beat!Drums!,” and “Dirge for Two Veterans.”He probably created the orchestrations thesame year for a proposed recording by JohnCharles Thomas, a highly successful bari-tone who specialized in light opera. Weillcomposed “Come Up from the Fields,

Father” in 1947 and reordered the foursongs into a more dramatic cycle for arecording by tenor William Horne andpianist Adam Garner. This added songremained unorchestrated until six yearsafter Weill’s death, when the Spanish-bornAmerican composer Carlos Surinachundertook the task, using Weill’s 1942orchestrations as a model. Surinach caughtthe obvious references from Street Scene inthe song, and effectively recreated the lyri-cal sweep of the Lilac Scene and the inti-macy of “A Boy Like You.”

St.Clair and the Pacific Symphony—which comprises mostly top-notch filmstudio musicians—achieved a perfect bal-ance between a vernacular style and theseriousness demanded by the text. Theywould do a wonderful job with any ofWeill’s Broadway musicals. BaritoneDouglas Webster, too, has extensive experi-ence singing “popular” and “serious”idioms, but for this performance he seemedto be in lieder mode. His shadings were toosubtle to be heard over an orchestra in a bighall. Nor did he seem particularly comfort-able with the tessitura of the songs. Still,the performance provided a rare opportu-nity to hear a committed orchestral perfor-mance of the Whitman Songs placed withina meaningful historical context.

Two works closed the concert: AmberWaves by Gould, an orchestral fantasy on“America the Beautiful” composed in 1976for the U.S. Bicentennial, and the worldpremiere of Mount Rushmore for chorusand orchestra, composed by MichaelDaugherty, the only living composer repre-sented on the program. (Mount Rushmoreis the site of monumental sculptures of thefaces of four famous American presidents:George Washington, Thomas Jefferson,Theodore Roosevelt, and AbrahamLincoln.) The Pacific Chorale (JohnAlexander, artistic director) enhanced theperformance with exceptionally strongsinging.

Daugherty based his text on letters andwritings by the four presidents and drewmusical inspiration from shape-notesinging, patriotic tunes, Carl Orff, and JohnAdams. For the finale Daugherty pulledout all the stops—soaring themes, massivechoral sound, loud organ—to create epicmusic reminiscent of Miklós Rózsa’s scorefor Ben Hur. Thus ended a well-executedprogram steeped in patriotism and infusedwith thought-provoking nationalism.

David Farneth

Getty Research Institute, Los AngelesWalt Whitman. Photo: Matthew Brady


Performances

The Broadway Musicals of1948

Town HallNew York

22 March 2010

For the tenth season of “Broadway By theYear,” a series in which each concert focus-es on shows that premiered during the yeargiven in the title, creator and mastermindScott Siegel assembled a talented group often singers to perform selections fromeight (out of more than a dozen) new musi-cals from 1948. Some of the shows areentirely forgotten today or just barelyremembered, even by those who werearound at the time. Many of Siegel’s loyalfans became regular theatergoers a half-century ago, during Broadway’s GoldenAge, and there is always an appreciativeaudience for these popular one-perfor-mance-only events.

Love Life, Weill and Alan JayLerner’s 1948 vaudeville musical, hasnever had a New York revival or anoriginal cast recording, so Siegel andTown Hall deserve credit for makingsure it was represented. Three of thefour songs on the bill belonged to thelead characters, Susan and SamuelCooper, with one song drawn from thevaudeville numbers.

Each number was introduced bythe host with some information aboutthe song or show. Since Siegel is cele-brating songs from a bygone era, onemight expect that he would provide hisaudience with some idea of how theywere originally performed, difficult asthat might be in some cases. That did-n’t always happen, and many of thenumbers were divorced from theiroriginal contexts. An example was theevening’s first Love Life offering,“Economics,” sung by KristenDausch. She did a nice job articulatingLerner’s satirical lyrics, which theaudience generally found amusing, butthe full power of this jive-inspiredsong didn’t come across. Since it wascomposed for male quartet and origi-nally performed in a vaudeville style,

“Economics” was deprived of the variety ofsolo voices during the witty verses and offour-part harmony in the refrain.

One wonders why Siegel chose “IRemember It Well.” A pleasant number,yes, but surely it ranks a few notches belowothers not represented, such as the boldlymacho “This Is the Life,” or the jaunty“Green-up Time,” or the sentimental duet“Here I’ll Stay.” Presumably, “I RememberIt Well” got the nod because it gave Siegela chance to startle uninformed spectatorsby telling them that Lerner reworked thelyrics (to fit Frederick Loewe’s music) tenyears later for the film Gigi (and with morepopular results). Who could resist tellingsuch a story? No matter, Bobby Steggertand Farah Alvin, an attractive and appeal-ing young couple, sang delightfully aboutmemories of youthful courtship, eventhough they looked and acted muchyounger and more innocent than we wouldexpect from Sam and Susan. The duo didnot perform the song’s darker repriselyrics.

Kristen Dausch was vocally more com-fortable with her second Love Life song,“Mr. Right,” successfully using her strongvoice with just the right amount ofBroadway belt and comic flair for this satir-

ical torch song. The show’s other torchsong, the more serious “Is It Him or Is ItMe?” was also pleasantly handled, this timeby Farah Alvin. She chose to add an overlayof angst to this rather simple lament, creat-ing a purposeful and sympathetic characterthat could work quite well as Susanonstage.

Siegel offered a curious Love Life tidbit:Beatrice Lillie was among the actressesoriginally sought to play Susan. Really? I’venever come across this bit of informationanywhere, and it seems like a genuinely oddchoice. Perhaps Siegel meant to sayGertrude Lawrence, who was indeedoffered the part but turned it down becauseshe refused to perform during the summermonths—which, according to Siegel, iswhy Lillie did not accept the role.

Love Life fared only moderately well onBroadway, racking up 252 performances. Afew days after it opened, Frank Loesser’sconsiderably more successful Where’sCharley? debuted. We were treated to a fewof that show’s popular selections, mostnotably “Once in Love with Amy,” whichwas wonderfully sung and danced in char-acter by Noah Racey (who has played thelead role to great acclaim several times).Another show that overshadowed Love Life

in 1948 opened on 30 December, justbarely in time to qualify, Cole Porter’sKiss Me, Kate. During the evening, thecast presented seven familiar Katenumbers. Baritone William Michalsmade the strongest impression with“Where Is the Life that Late I Led?”and “So in Love.” (How I would haveliked to hear him sing “Love Song”from Love Life!)

Siegel rounded out the programwith selections from three revues,Make Mine Manhattan, Lend an Ear,and Inside USA; and two other shows,Magdalena and As the Girls Go. Theroster of other first-rate performersincluded Melissa Manchester, ErinDenman, Jeffry Denman, JohnEasterlin, and Josh Grisetti. As he hasdone for the past ten years, RossPatterson provided excellent musicalsupport as arranger and pianist withhis Ross Patterson Little Big Band.

Joe Frazzetta

New York

Poster from original production of Love Life on Broadway, 1948.

THE KURT WEILL FOUNDATION FOR MUSIC, INC.

7 East 20th Street

New York, NY 10003-1106

The Kurt Weill Edition makes available to performers and scholars the works of one of the most frequently performed, fascinating, and provocative composers of the Twentieth Century.

THE KURT WEILL EDITION

For prices and subscription information, direct your web browser to the Kurt Weill Edition page on www.kwf.org.

AVAILABLE VOLUMES

Zaubernacht (SER. I, VOL. 0)edited by Elmar Juchem and Andrew Kuster

Der Protagonist, op. 15 (SER. I, VOL. 1)edited by Gunther Diehl and Jürgen Selk

Die Dreigroschenoper (SER. I, VOL. 5)edited by Stephen Hinton and Edward Harsh

The Firebrand of Florence (SER. I, VOL. 18)edited by Joel Galand

Chamber Music (SER. II, VOL. 1)edited by Wolfgang Rathert and Jürgen Selk

Die Dreigroschenoper: full-color facsimileof the holograph full score (SER. IV, VOL. 1)

edited by Edward Harsh

Popular Adaptations, 1927–1950 (SER. IV, VOL. 2)edited by Charles Hamm, Elmar Juchem and Kim H. Kowalke

FORTHCOMING VOLUMES

Music with Solo Violin (SER. II, VOL. 2)Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments, op. 12,

Der neue Orpheus, op. 16; edited by Andreas Eichhorn

Lady in the Dark (SER. I, VOL. 16)edited by bruce mcclung

Johnny Johnson (SER. I, VOL. 13)edited by Tim Carter

Die sieben Todsünden (SER. I, VOL. 10)edited by Kim H. Kowalke

One Touch of Venus (SER. I, VOL. 17)edited by Jon Alan Conrad

Series I - STAGE(24 volumes)

Series II - CONCERT(9 volumes)

Series III - SCREEN(1 volume)

Series IV - MISCELLANEA(2+ volumes)

Kurt Weill - KWFthe orchestrations for Carouseland The King and I.] Note from the Editor “It can...

Documents

Transcript of Kurt Weill - KWFthe orchestrations for Carouseland The King and I.] Note from the Editor “It can...