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David Farneth, Elmar Juchem, Dave Stein, Bernard Schleifer (Editor)
Kurt Weill: A Life in Pictures and Documents
Overlook Press
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Kurt Weill
Songs Volume 1, A Centennial Anthology
Warner Brothers Publications
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David Farneth
Kurt Weill
Overlook TP
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David Drew
Kurt Weill: A Handbook
University of California Press
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Jurgen Schebera
Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Life
Yale University Press
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Ute Lemper, Michael Nyman and others
Sings Kurt Weill / Michael Nyman Songbook
Decca
DVD
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Brock Peters, Melba Moore
Lost in the Stars
Kino Video
DVD
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Helen Mirren, Olivier Martinez, Anne Bancroft, Rodrigo Santoro, Brian Dennehy
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
Showtime Ent.
DVD
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Robert Walker, Ava Gardner, Dick Haymes, Eve Arden
One Touch of Venus
Lions Gate
VHS
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Knickerbocker Holiday
Nostalgia Home Video
VHS
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Lotte Lenya, Beatrice Arthur, Charlotte Rae, Marc Blitzstein, Jo Sullivan Loesser, Scott Merrill, John Astin
The Threepenny Opera (1954 New York Cast)
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Todd Duncan, Inez Matthews, Sheila Guyse, Herbert Coleman
Lost In The Stars (1949 Original Broadway Cast)
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Charlie Haden, Kurt Weill, Gerard Schwartz, Gerard Schwarz, The Persuasions, Y Chamber Symphony of New York, Fred Hersch, Kurt Weill, Richard Woitach, Betty Carter, Elvis Costello (Declan MacManus), Lotte Lenya, Lou Reed, Mary Margaret O'Hara, Nick Cave
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill
Sony
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Paul Smith Quartet, Ella Fitzgerald
Mack the Knife: The Complete Ella in Berlin
Polygram Records
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Frank Sinatra
September Song
Goldies
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George Shearing
My Ship
Polygram Records
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Lew Soloff
Speak Low
ProJazz
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Laurindo Almeida & Bud Shank
Speak Low
Past Perfect
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Walter Jr. Bishop
Speak Low
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Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill
Composer
(1900 - 1950)
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Kurt Weill was a musical prodigy from a family of distinguished rabbis. He studied in Berlin, presented his first opera in 1926, and was acclaimed as a leading modernist composer. With left-wing poet Bertolt Brecht he developed a distinctive style of opera, integrating political material through popular song. In 1928 The Three Penny Opera, rife with jazz and blues and starring Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, was a sensation. Weill’s strident melodies captured the nihilism and corruption of 1920’s Germany. A 1933 U.S. production flopped, but a successful revival (1954), with new lyrics by Marc Blitzstein, made a hit of “Mack the Knife” which won Grammies for Bobby Darin (1959) and Ella Fitzgerald (1960). Happy End (1929) produced “The Bilbao Song,” a later hit with Johnny Mercer’s lyrics. Mahagonny, their satire of capitalism set in a mythical American city, premiered in 1930 but was not seen in the U.S. until 1970. Its “Alabama Song” is full of ribald humor.
In 1933 Weill and Lenya fled to Paris and then America in 1935, the same year that Nazis closed Weill’s last German production. In the U.S. Weill worked on a film history of the Jews and on an anti-war satire with the influential Group Theatre. 1938’s Knickerbocker Holiday established Weill as a new force in American theater and captivated audiences with “September Song.” Lady in the Dark (1941, lyrics by Ira Gershwin) produced “My Ship,” and the musical comedy, One Touch of Venus (1943, lyrics by Ogden Nash), gave us “Speak Low.” Weill’s last work dealt with racial intolerance. Lost in the Stars (1949) with its touching title song, was adapted by Maxwell Anderson from Alan Paton’s book on South Africa, Cry, the Beloved Country.
Lenya, who collaborated on Weill’s work, remained involved with theater and played in U.S. films, winning a Best Supporting Actress nomination for The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961).
- Sandra Burlingame |
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