Kurt Weill fans... check in

Listening to "Mahogany" right now. What a work.

:hi:

Threepenny Opera is playing live in Vancouver next month...

Bus since Mrs. Amok and I are separated, I don't have anyone in my life who loves Weill/Brecht as much as I do, so I don't suppose I'll go. :(


Have you read "Speak Low", the collection of letters between Weill and Lenya? It's a wonderful book!

GO!

Don't miss the show. Give away the extra ticket outside the theater if you must. One doesn't need a date to enjoy great music.

I haven't read that book, but I'd like to. They were both so interesting and lived in such interesting times.

Opera", ca. early 1960's that features Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya, Beatrice Arthur as Lucy Brown, and Charlotte Rae as Mrs. Peachman, and uses Weill's original orchestration, and was performed in Theater de Lys in New York City. What a treasure!

I worked on some Kurt Weill arrangements for a school concert at the Music Hall in Aberdeen when I was fifteen. Variations on September Song, that sort of thing.

As you make your bed so you lie there
But who tucks you in when you do?
And if someone steps up, I'll be that one
And if someone gets stepped on that one's you

but would I be correct in saying "Cabaret" owes a lot to him? That lilting rhythm (sp?) going on in the background during the opening song, for instance.

I've performed as Sam in his Street Scene which isn't bad as American musicals go, but it's far from great.

Mahogany - or, The City of My Agony, as they called it backstage at the Met during its run in the '80s - contains some singularly ugly music.

I guess I shouldn't have checked in - I'm obviously no fan.

I'm sorry to say that part of the lyrical genius (the Brechtian part) of Threepenny Opera is lost in translation. My personal favorite recording (hysterically funny) is the one with the first original actors that were personally involved with Brecht and Weill.

Weill may well have been the greater genius of the two, though. Hard to say because I'm not yet familiar with the entirety of their work.

What, for you'all, is the very best Kurt Weill?

The entire human condition, summed up in a handful of words.


Before Lord God made the sea and the land,
He held all the stars in the palm of his hand,
and they ran through his fingers like grains of sand,
and one little star fell alone.

And the Lord God hunted through the wild night air,
for the little lost star in the wind down there,
And he stated and promised he'd take special care,
So it wouldn't get lost again.

Now, man don't mind if the stars grow dim,
And the clouds blow over, and darken him,
As long as the Lord God's watching over him,
Keeping track how it all goes on.

But I've been walking through the night and the day,
Till my eyes grow weary and my hair turns grey,
And sometimes it seems maybe God's gone away,
Forgetting the promise that we heard him say,

And we're lost out here in the stars,
Little stars, big stars, blowing through the night,
And we're lost out here in the stars,
Little stars, big stars, blowing through the night,

And we're lost out here in the stars.