NET PLAYHOUSE: THE WORLD OF KURT WEILL (TV)
Summary
One in this dramatic showcase series. In this program actress/singer Lotte Lenya and George Voskovec pay tribute to Lenya's late husband, composer Kurt Weill. In this exploration of the man and his music, Lotte Lenya, the supreme dramatic interpreter of Weill's work, performs nearly all of the composer's best-known songs in her inimitable declamatory style. Interwoven throughout, she and Voskovec offer a brief biographical overview of Weill's life and his work, especially his fruitful collaboration with Bertolt Brecht in Germany and the political and social conscience that informed his work.
Highlights include: from "Mahagonny," the first Weill-Brecht collaboration in 1927, Lenya sings "Alabama Song," which was one of the first songs Weill and Brecht wrote for her, and which reflected their fascination with an America, "of freedom, of crime, and of great human and natural disaster"; Lenya reminisces about the audience rising to its feet both cheering and booing at the end of the avant-garde "Mahagonny"; Voskovec describes the impact of the 1929 economic crisis and the rise of the Nazis; Lenya sings the first of the many Brecht-Weill "Jenny" songs" from "Mahagonny"; Voskovec asserts that Weill was equally at home in the opera house, the low dive, the concert hall, the synagogue, and on Broadway, and describes the composer as a wandering Jew, "a migrant in an age of immigration"; Weill's exploration of the political and social struggles of our century is praised for opening a window on our time and leaving it open for all time; next, Lenya sings "Mack the Knife" from "The Threepeny Opera" and recalls that Weill was so angry because her name was left off the playbill that he urged her not to go on, but she did, exclaiming, "Don't worry, tomorrow they'll know who I am"; from "The Threepenny Opera," Lenya next sings "Pirate Jenny" which has been described as "the greatest incendiary song of our time"; from "Happy End," the next Brecht-Weill collaboration -- a musical with a "bold and lyrical score" about guys and dolls in Chicago -- Lenya sings the nostalgic "Bilbao Moon"; Lenya explains that the team's penchant for exotic and musical titles came from a map in Brecht's study which the two studied closely when it came time to leave Germany; Voskovec explains that unlike a Broadway musical -- in which a song flows out of the narrative and advances it -- a Weill-Brecht song does the opposite, it stops the show and makes a comment; from "Happy End" Lenya sings the torch song "Surabaya Johnny"; next Voskovec discusses the team's two full-length works about war and its effect on people, and Lenya sings the grim "To Potsdam" written in 1928; Lenya describes how after the premiere of the highly successful "Silverlake," she and Weill left Germany and arrived in America in 1935; Voskovec examines how Weill made America his musical home and mentions Weill's first American collaboration, with Paul Green on "Johnny Johnson," a call for the peace in the world; Voskovec describes Weill the artistic as well as physical exile, ahead of his time and out of sync with the Broadway of the 1930s because he stressed lyricism over sentimentality, irony instead of gags; Lenya sings the perky "Green-up Time" from "Love Life" (with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner) which in its optimism reflects Weill's attempt to fashion a new American musical idiom; from "Knickerbocker Holiday," (Weill's first collaboration with Maxwell Anderson) Lenya sings "September Song" which Weill described as his most romantic song; Voscovec calls "Lady in the Dark" Weill's first great popular success in New York and mentions that the show introduced both Danny Kaye and Sigmund Freud to Broadway, and revived Weill's "Jenny" character; Lenya sings "The Saga of Jenny"; from "Street Scene," Weill's most ambitious attempt to realize his dream of writing an American folk opera, Lenya sings the wrenching "Lonely House"; Voskovec mentions Weill's early death in 1950 while working on a musical adaptation of "Huckleberry Finn"; in conclusion, after explaining that it wasn't difficult for Weill to identify with the plight of the black man, Lenya sings the hymn-like title song from "Lost in the Stars," Weill's last completed score and final collaboration with Maxwell Anderson.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WGBH Boston, MA
- DATE: February 24, 1967 Friday 8:30 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:57:55
- COLOR/B&W: B&W
- CATALOG ID: T87:0482
- GENRE: Music
- SUBJECT HEADING: Biography; Composers; Music, popular (songs, etc.)
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1966-1972
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- David M. Davis … Producer, Director
- Elizabeth Burton … Direction (Misc.), Assistant Director
- Deborah Kramlich … Choreographer
- George Tabori … Writer, Narrative by
- Gershon Kingsley … Music (Misc. Credits), Musical Director
- Cambridge Festival Orchestra … Orchestra
- Robert Brink … Choral Director, Concertmaster
- Lotte Lenya … Performer
- George Voskovec … Performer
- John Bates … Chorus
- Constance Patti … Chorus
- Frank Coffey … Chorus
- Vanessa Conaway … Chorus
- Dan Turek … Chorus
- George Comtois … Chorus
- Gail Nelson … Chorus
- RenŽ Rancourt … Chorus
- Bette Wolf … Chorus
- Karol Kostka … Chorus