News Archive

2005 Kurt Weill Prize to Andrea Most
Kurt Weill's Chamber Music Is Published
Weill's Royal Palace Released on CD by Capriccio
Winners of 2004 Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers Announced
Unsung Weill Songbook Published
Weill's Eternal Road Now Available on CD
2003 Kurt Weill Prize Winners Announced
75th Anniversary of The Threepenny Opera
Critical Edition of The Firebrand of Florence Published
Winners of 2003 Lenya Competition for Singers Announced
Kurt Weill: Making Music Theater
2001 Kurt Weill Prize Awarded
Julius Rudel Receives Distinguished Achievement Award
Critical Edition of Die Dreigroschenoper Published
1999 Kurt Weill Prize Winners
Centenary Opening Ceremony
Worldwide Centenary Announced
Lotte Lenya Centenary Activities
Museum of Television and Radio Announces Kurt Weill Video Series
Eastman School of Music to Host Weill Festival

2005 Kurt Weill Prize to Andrea Most

The 2005 Kurt Weill Prize has been awarded to Andrea Most of the University of Toronto for her book, Making Americans: Jews and the Broadway Musical (Harvard University Press, 2004). In an examination of Broadway theater in the period 1925 to 1951, from The Jazz Singer to The King and I, Most maintains that the process of Jewish acculturation in America and the development of the Broadway musical are inextricably joined. Most receives a prize award of $2500. Also singled out by the prize panel for honorable mention in the book category was Bill Egan, for his book Florence Mills: Harlem Jazz Queen (Scarecrow Press, 2004), a biography of a remarkable African-American entertainer of the 1920s. The panel did not award a prize in the article category.

The Kurt Weill Prize is awarded biennially for distinguished scholarship on twentieth-century musical theater. The four-member selection panel consists of representatives from the Modern Language Association, the American Musicological Society, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. Scholarly work first published in 2005 and 2006 may be nominated for the 2007 book and article prizes. Nominations, including five copies of the nominated work and contact information for the author, must be received by 30 April 2007 at the offices of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, 7 East 20th Street, New York, NY 10003.

Kurt Weill's Chamber Music Is Published

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of Kurt Weill's complete Chamber Music. Edited by Dr. Wolfgang Rathert (Professor of musicology at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich) and Jürgen Selk (Managing Editor, Kurt Weill Edition), the new publication makes available musical works by Kurt Weill which, while comprising only a small portion of Weill's oeuvre, played a considerable role in his formative years (1919-24). The new edition includes two string quartets as well as two separate movements for string quartet, a sonata for violoncello and piano, the song cycle Frauentanz, and the vocal-instrumental miniature Ick sitze da--un esse Klops.

The relative obscurity of Weill's chamber music can be partially explained by the overshadowing success of his first stage works, beginning with the acclaimed one-act opera Der Protagonist. However, the compositional quality and musical significance of these works of "absolute music" have also been obscured by their uneven publication and performance history, which partly explains their absence from the mainstream of the concert repertoire. This is regrettable, as some of these pieces are of considerable ingenuity and aesthetic appeal and may rank among the outstanding German musical works of this period.

The new edition of Weill's Chamber Music makes this body of work available now in one volume. Several of the Chamber Music works included in the new edition have never before been available in print. Published with an accompanying critical report volume, Chamber Music constitutes the fourth volume in the Kurt Weill Edition, a collected critical edition of his completed works. The next volume in the Kurt Weill Edition, currently in production, is the critical edition of Weill's one-act opera Der Protagonist, scheduled for publication in 2005.

Weill's Royal Palace
Released on CD by Capriccio

Premiere Recording Also Includes Der neue Orpheus

On 2 March 1927, Kurt Weill celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday at Berlin’s Staatsoper unter den Linden, where Erich Kleiber was conducting the premiere of two Weill works with texts by the Alsatian poet Iwan Goll, the one-act opera Royal Palace and the cantata Der neue Orpheus. Seventy-seven years later, the first recording of Royal Palace is finally available--paired with Der neue Orpheus--with the August 2004 release of a new CD from Capriccio featuring the BBC Symphony Orchestra and conductor Sir Andrew Davis. Both works were recorded live during the BBC Symphony’s January 2000 Kurt Weill Weekend.

Set at a lakeside resort, Royal Palace presents the situation of a beautiful woman who is asked to choose between three men: her husband, her former lover, and a new admirer. Weary of their egotism and attempts to possess her, she decides instead to drown herself in the lake. The Capriccio cast includes Janice Watson as Dejanira, Stephen Richardson as The Husband, and Ashley Holland and Richard Coxon as Yesterday’s Lover and Tomorrow’s Admirer.

Subtitled a "Cantata for soprano, violin, and orchestra," Der neue Orpheus tells of a modern-day Orpheus who finds his Eurydice in a train station but loses her again in the crowd. Abandoned in the waiting room, he shoots himself in the heart. Orpheus soloists are Kathryn Harries, soprano, and Michael Davis, violin.

The expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser introduced Kurt Weill and Iwan Goll in late 1924, and the two soon decided to collaborate on Royal Palace, which was finished in early 1926. Weill set Goll’s pre-existing poem Der neue Orpheus in the summer of 1925, while Goll was writing the libretto for Royal Palace. In both scores, elements of popular music are incorporated, and Royal Palace is the first of Weill’s compositions showing jazz influences, inclusion of saxophone in the orchestration, and use of dance forms such as the fox-trot and, most notably, the tango.

After a production at the Essen Opera in 1929, the orchestral score and parts for Royal Palace were lost during the Nazi era, and the opera was not performed again until 1971, when a reconstructed orchestration derived from the piano reduction by Gunther Schuller and Noam Sheriff was heard in concert at that year’s Holland Festival. The reconstituted Royal Palace was not seen in a major professional theater until this summer, when the 2004 Bregenz Festival in Austria premiered a new production, conducted by Yakov Kreizberg and directed by Nicolas Brieger, in tandem with Weill’s one-act opera Der Protagonist.

Royal Palace/Der neue Orpheus (Capriccio 60 106) is the latest installment in Capriccio’s Weill series, following The Firebrand of Florence. The latter multi-award winning CD, a collaboration between Weill, Ira Gershwin, and Edwin Justus Mayer, was released in August 2003.

Three Net Top Prizes in the 2004 Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers

Contest Honors Dramatic and Musical Versatility

Three winners were selected in the 2004 Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers at the end of day-long final auditions on Saturday, 27 March, at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. Breaking with tradition, the judges chose to award three prizes of $6,000 each to Richard Todd Adams, tenor, 29; Amy Justman, soprano, 25; and Misty Ann Sturm, soprano, 26, instead of ranking the prizewinners. All three are New York metropolitan area residents. The winners will be presented in concert at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, New York City, on 3 June at 6:00 pm.

The 2004 competition finals were judged by a team of distinguished opera/musical theater professionals: Theodore Chapin, President of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization and longtime Tony-Award nominator; Angelina Réaux, opera singer and musical theater actress featured in many international productions and recordings of Weill's works; and Alvin Epstein, actor and cabaret artist with a 50-year career on and off-Broadway. The judges heard each contestant perform an aria from the opera/operetta repertoire, two contrasting theatrical selections by Kurt Weill, and a selection from the Broadway musical theater repertoire by a composer other than Weill.

Twelve competition finalists were selected from 100 contestants at regional auditions held in New York City, Rochester, and Chicago by regional judges Joyce Castle, Judy Kaye, Charlie Scatamacchia, and Welz Kauffman. In addition to the winners listed above, finalists were sopranos Raquel Adorno, 22 (Urbana, IL), Victoria Baker, 23 (Greenwich, CT), and Re'ut Ben-Ze'ev, 32 (Forest Hills, NY); mezzo-sopranos Audrey Babcock, 24 (New York, NY), Alta M. Boover, 25 (New York, NY), and Rebecca Jo Loeb, 21 (Ann Arbor, MI); and baritones Jesse Blumberg, 24 (New York, NY), Andrew Garland, 26 (Cincinnati, OH), and Oliver Henderson, 28 (Greenville, NC).

Kurt Weill was renowned for his ability to compose idiomatically in many musical styles, and his works have been heard on the Broadway stage, in opera houses, in concert halls, and in Hollywood films. In honor of Weill's wife and foremost interpreter, Lotte Lenya, in 1998 the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music established an annual Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers to recognize versatile young artists who are dramatically and musically convincing in contrasting styles of music by Weill and other stage composers.

In the six years since it was inaugurated, the Lotte Lenya Competition has grown into an international contest. Winners from past years have gone on to appear in roles at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the Canadian Opera Company, the Houston Grand Opera, in Baz Luhrmann's Broadway Boheme, and in the current national touring companies of Oliver and The Sound of Music, among others.

More information about the Lenya Competition.

Unsung No More

Unsung Weill, a New Album of Kurt Weill Songs, Is Published

European American Music Corporation has just published Unsung Weill, a volume of twenty-two songs from the pen of Kurt Weill, famed composer of The Threepenny Opera. These vocal gems, cut from shows and films and hidden in archives for more than half a century, are now available for the first time. With contributions from the most famous lyric writers of the classic Broadway era, including Langston Hughes, Ogden Nash, Ira Gershwin, and Oscar Hammerstein, these selections are a must-have for anyone interested in Broadway.

Unsung Weill presents numbers from all of Weill's Broadway hits and three film scores, including the music for Fritz Lang's You and Me. In addition, the volume features two propaganda songs from World War II's Lunchtime Follies, with lyrics by Lewis Allan (aka Abel Meeropol) and Oscar Hammerstein II. The Broadway shows represented in the album are Johnny Johnson, Knickerbocker Holiday, Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Street Scene, Love Life, and Lost in the Stars, with lyrics by Paul Green, Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Ogden Nash, Langston Hughes, and Alan Jay Lerner. In addition to Gershwin, Weill's lyricist collaborators on the included film songs were Sam Coslow and Ann Ronell.

Kurt Weill worked extremely economically and usually custom-tailored his music to the dramatic context of his works for the theater. In spite of that, book revisions, vocal limitations of performers, and over-long shows sometimes caused song to be cut. Rarely, in Weill's case, was a song not up to standards. With Weill's trademark blend of irony and sincerity, the Unsung songs present a wide variety of musical and dramatic styles. Opera singers and jazz guitarists alike will want to add these songs to their repertoire.

Weill's Eternal Road Now Available on CD

The Eternal Road, Kurt Weill's 1937 theatrical collaboration with Franz Werfel and Max Reinhardt, combines the story of a Jewish congregation on the eve of a pogrom with dramatizations of beloved stories from the Bible. The original, monumental production utilized the talents of Norman Bel Geddes, Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, Sam Jaffe, a 13-year old Sidney Lumet, and Lotte Lenya, among many others. Now the work has been chosen to inaugurate the Milken Archive's new recording series focusing on American Jewish music, in a CD from the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin with Gerard Schwarz conducting, containing 70 minutes of Eternal Road excerpts, about a third of the entire score. Multiple solo roles are filled by James Maddalena, Karl Dent, Ted Christopher, Vale Rideout, Barbara Rearick, and Constance Hauman, and choral support is provided by Berlin's Ernst Senff Chor.

Press reaction to the recording has been highly favorable ? Donald Rosenberg of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported: "A colorful blend of Jewish liturgical sources and the composer's own vigorous and piquant creativity." "From choral numbers in Handelian style to actual liturgical music to wry ditties that echo The Threepenny Opera . . . A stirring performance that makes one impatient to hear the entire work," concluded the Chicago Tribune's John von Rhein.

The Eternal Road lay forgotten after its initial New York production, until a revival of interest fueled by Weill's centenary led to a gala 1999 staged production of the work in its German-language version (Der Weg der Verheißung) at the Chemnitz Opera. The production later toured to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, EXPO 2000 in Hannover, and the New Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv. Several leading orchestras have presented excerpts from The Eternal Road in concert, including the BBC Symphony Orchestra (at the BBC Proms), Bochum Symphony Orchestra, the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (at Cincinnati May Festival), and the American Symphony Orchestra. The Plymouth Music Series in Minneapolis presented the entire score in concert under the title The Road of Promise.

2003 Kurt Weill Prizewinners Announced

The 2003 Kurt Weill Prize has been awarded to W. Anthony Sheppard's book Revealing Masks: Exotic Influences and Ritualized Performance in Modernist Music Theater (2001, University of California Press). Citing the work of twentieth-century composers such as Stravinsky, Britten, and Honegger, Sheppard investigates their use of Japanese Noh, medieval Christian drama, and ancient Greek theater as models for the creation of "total theater." Sheppard receives a prize award of $2500. The prize panel also singled out Anthony Shay's Choreographic Politics: State Folk Dance Companies, Representation and Power (2002, Wesleyan University Press) for honorable mention in the book category. In the article category, the $500 prizewinner was Alan Lareau's "Jonny's Jazz: From Kabarett to Krenek," which appeared in Jazz & the Germans: Essays on the Influence of "Hot" American Idioms on 20th-Century German Music (2002, Pendragon Press).

The Kurt Weill Prize is awarded biennially for distinguished scholarship on twentieth-century musical theater. The four-member selection panel consists of representatives from the Modern Language Association, the American Musicological Society, the American Society for Theatre Research, and the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. Scholarly work first published in 2003 and 2004 may be nominated for the 2005 book and article prizes. Nominations, including five copies of the nominated work and contact information for the author, must be received by 30 April 2005 at the offices of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, 7 East 20th Street, New York, NY 10003.

The Threepenny Opera celebrates its 75th Anniversary

"Mack the Knife" Still Thrills

A milestone of 20th century musical theater, The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) will reach its 75th birthday on August 31, proving that some cultural icons, like classic movie stars, remain forever young. In their opera "by and for beggars," composer Kurt Weill and playwright Bertolt Brecht transformed saccharine, old-fashioned opera and operetta forms, incorporating a sharp political perspective and the sound of 1920s Berlin dance bands and cabaret. Weill's acid harmonies and Brecht's biting texts created a revolutionary new musical theater that inspired such subsequent hits as Cabaret and Chicago and the current Urinetown. And the show's opening number, "The Ballad of Mack the Knife," has become one of the top popular songs of the last century.

The opening night audience at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm didn't quite know what to expect when the curtain rose on The Threepenny Opera on August 31, 1928, but after the first few musical numbers they began to cheer and call for encores. The show was a brilliant hit, and sheet music was hastily published for the songs, which were performed in homes, in cabarets, and on the radio. Threepenny-fever spread throughout Europe, generating forty-six stage productions of the work in the first year after the Berlin premiere. By 1931, a film version directed by G.W. Pabst entitled Die 3-Groschenoper had opened, making an international star of Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya, who repeated her performance of Jenny Diver from the show's first production.

Based on The Beggar's Opera, written by John Gay in 1728, Weill and Brecht's version retains the London setting of the original, but moves the action to the eve of Queen Victoria's coronation. The gangster Macheath marries Polly Peachum, daughter of the boss of London's beggars. Her enraged father denounces Macheath to the police, and he is turned in by Jenny Diver, an old love. After another wife, Lucy, visits him in jail, Macheath manages to escape but is recaptured. Brought to the gallows for execution, he is pardoned by the queen in honor of her coronation. The Threepenny Opera had been seen in 130 separate productions worldwide by 1933, before the rise of the Nazis forced Weill to flee to Paris in March of that year. He eventually settled in America with Lenya in September 1935; Brecht escaped through Scandinavia, finally reaching the United States via Siberia in 1941. A Nazi moratorium banished all Weill/Brecht works from the German stage, and the 1938 exhibition "Entartete Musik" in Düsseldorf blasted The Threepenny Opera as an example of degenerate Jewish socialist art.

Although The Threepenny Opera reappeared in theaters in Germany and the United States shortly after the end of the war, the work's true renaissance began with a June 14, 1952, concert performance of Marc Blitzstein's English adaptation at Brandeis University, conducted by Leonard Bernstein and featuring Lotte Lenya as Jenny. The resulting excitement engendered a New York off-Broadway stage production at the Theater de Lys. Opening on March 10, 1954, for a limited run and re-opening on September 20, 1955, the show had a total of 2,611 performances, at that time the longest running musical in history. The cast album sold in record-breaking numbers, and versions of "Mack the Knife" were hits for Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, and Ella Fitzgerald.

Today, seventy-five years after its premiere, The Threepenny Opera is still entertaining contemporary audiences from the Philippines to Israel, from Turkey to Brazil. The re-released recording from the 1954 revival is available on CD, along with a splendid BMG recording made in 1999 incorporating the new critical edition of the score; a dozen other recordings of the complete show are available in various languages. There are three cinematic versions of the work, made in 1931, 1963, and 1988, respectively; and negotiations are currently underway for a fourth Threepenny Opera major film. The Roundabout Theatre Company has commissioned Wallace Shawn to write a new translation of the book and lyrics for a Broadway production in the 2004-2005 season, to be directed by Scott Elliott. Judging by the evidence, the music and story of The Threepenny Opera remain as irresistible to today's audiences as they were in 1928.

Kurt Weill's The Firebrand of Florence Is Published

First Ever Broadway Critical Edition

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of the first critical edition of a Broadway musical, Kurt Weill's and Ira Gershwin's The Firebrand of Florence. Edited by the music theorist and Broadway scholar Joel Galand, the new publication finally makes available for the first time the complete score and libretto of one of Weill's most expansive musical offerings. Published in two volumes with an accompanying critical report volume, The Firebrand of Florence constitutes the third publication in the Kurt Weill Edition, a collected critical edition of his completed works.

After the original Broadway run in 1945 in a lavish spectacle produced by Max Gordon, The Firebrand of Florence disappeared into undeserved obscurity, despite the fact that the work boasted a score by Weill, lyrics by Gershwin, and a book by Edwin Justus Mayer, esteemed playwright and screenwriter for numerous films, including To Be or Not To Be. In the mid-1990s, highlights from Firebrand based on original source material were included in two recorded compilations of Weill's Broadway music. But not until three recent presentations--a 1999 staged production at Ohio Light Opera and two concert versions in 2000 by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London and by the Radio Symphony Orchestra Vienna--have contemporary audiences been able to experience this work in its entirety. These performances, which were based on a preliminary version of the now completed critical edition, played to critical acclaim and suggest a future for Firebrand beyond that of a curiosity for Broadway specialists.

After The Firebrand of Florence closed, Weill moved on to other projects and left no further indication as to the form in which Firebrand might be transmitted for future use. Therefore, the editor was called upon to evaluate various sources illustrating the work's collaborative evolution between its tryouts in Boston in 1945 and its subsequent staging on Broadway. Significant alterations in the form of cuts, reorchestrations, or reordering of musical sections, complicated the determination of which musical numbers should be included in the edition, and how. However, the critical report which accompanies the full score provides a comprehensive discussion of the existing sources, describes alternatives, and on the basis of the source evidence explains the editorial decision making process in concise prose.

A recording of the work from the BBC Symphony production under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis is scheduled to appear in 2003 on the Capriccio label. The next volumes in the Kurt Weill Edition, currently in production, are the critical edition of Weill's chamber music, to be published at the end of 2002, and the one-act opera Der Protagonist, scheduled for publication in 2003.

Five Winners Selected in the 2003 Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers

Kurt Weill was ahead of his time in his compositions for the opera house, the Broadway stage, and Hollywood films. Today the boundaries are disappearing between "classical" and "popular" music in the theater, and singer/actors are called upon to perform in many different musical styles. In honor of Weill's wife and foremost interpreter, Lotte Lenya, in 1998 the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music established an annual Lotte Lenya Competition for Singers to recognize versatile young artists who are dramatically and musically convincing in music by Weill and other stage composers.

Winners of the 2003 Lenya Competition were selected at the end of day-long final auditions on 22 March 2003 at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music. The first prize of $7500 was won by Siri Vik, soprano, of Cincinnati, OH; second prize of $5000 was awarded to baritone Peter McGillivray of Toronto, ON; and third prizes of $2000 each went to soprano Elaine Alvarez (Brooklyn, NY), tenor Jeffrey Behrens (Pittsburgh, PA), and baritone Michael McKinsey (Brooklyn, NY). All five winners will be presented in concert at the Lincoln Center Library for the Performing Arts, New York City, on 15 May at 6:00 pm. The 2003 competition finals were judged by a team of distinguished opera/musical theater professionals consisting of Teresa Stratas, world-renowned singer and interpreter of Weill; Theodore Chapin, President of the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization and longtime Tony-Award nominator; and Ted Sperling, Broadway musical director, conductor, stage director, pianist and actor.

Fifteen competition finalists were selected from more than 100 contestants at regional auditions held in New York City, Rochester, Chicago, and Cincinnati by regional judges Richard Pearlman, Joyce Castle, Eric Stern, and Teresa Stratas. In addition to the winners listed above, they were Richard Todd Adams (New York, NY), Casey Cole (New York, NY), Jennifer Brennan-Hondorp (Holt, MI), Kelli Harrington (Downers Grove, IL), Nathan Morgan (New York, NY), Melissa Angela Schiel (Toronto, ON), Aubrey Srednicki (Webster, NY), Misty Ann Sturm (Rochester, NY), Stephanie Tennill (New York, NY), and Amy Van Looy (Philadelphia, PA). To show versatility in the performance of varied musical theater styles, each contestant was asked to prepare an aria from the opera/operetta repertoire, a selection from one of Weill's European stage works, a selection from one of Weill's American stage works, and a selection from the Broadway musical theater repertoire by a composer other than Weill.

Kurt Weill: Making Music Theater

A new theatrical exhibition organized by the Kurt Weill Foundation and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
February 8-May 4, 2002, at the Library for the Performing Arts, 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York City.

The exhibition highlights the many facets of Weill as a composer for the theater. Throughout his career in Germany, France, and the United States, he challenged traditional forms and searched for new audiences. In Europe, he questioned post-Wagnerian opera; in the United States, he shunned formulaic musical comedy. He never seemed content with a single form, expanding and renewing old models as well as creating new, hybrid ones. Yet for all their differences, Weill's stage works share common features: an abundance of melody, attention to social and political issues, and recurring irony and ambiguity.

By its very nature, music theater is a collaborative art, and Weill worked with an impressive roster of gifted artists. Among them were writers Maxwell Anderson, Bertolt Brecht, Ira Gershwin, Moss Hart, Langston Hughes, Georg Kaiser, Alan Jay Lerner, and Ogden Nash. He worked with directors Elia Kazan, Rouben Mamoulian, Max Reinhardt, and Lee Strasberg, and choreographers George Balanchine, Agnes de Mille, Michael Kidd, and Anna Sokolow. Other collaborators represented in the exhibit include designers Boris Aronson, Norman Bel Geddes, Jo Mielziner, and Caspar Neher, and conductors Maurice Abravanel, Erich Kleiber, and Otto Klemperer. Among the countless performers represented in artifacts, audio, and video are Todd Duncan, Nanette Fabray, Walter Huston, Danny Kaye, Gertrude Lawrence, Peter Lorre, Mary Martin, and--most notably--his wife Lotte Lenya.

The archival collections of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and the Weill-Lenya Research Center bring these many artists to life. Weill's compositions and collaborations can be seen through scores, correspondence, photographs, and posters, as well as recordings and film. The process of making music theater comes to life in rehearsal notes, designs, and working drawings from Weill's major shows. Among the many exhibition highlights are autograph scores for "Mack the Knife" and the ballet Seven Deadly Sins, set models for The Eternal Road and Knickerbocker Holiday, and never-before exhibited designs by Boris Aronson for most of the scenes in Love Life.

2001 Kurt Weill Prizes Presented for Distinguished Scholarship in Music Theater

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, American Musicological Society, American Society for Theatre Research, and Modern Language Association are pleased to announce the winners of the 2001 Kurt Weill Prize for distinguished scholarship in twentieth-century music theater (including opera), the fourth such awards since the Prize was established in 1995.

The Ballets Russes and Its World, edited by Lynn Garafola and Nancy Van Norman Baer (Yale University Press, 1999), has been awarded a cash prize of $2,500 and a plaque. The prize committee singled out the book's editors for bringing to life a critical chaper of twentieth century artistic achievement through essays, facsimiles of sets and costumes, photographs, and other material.

The $500 prize in the article category is shared by Lisa Barg's "Black Voices/White Sounds: Race and Representation in Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts" (American Music, Summer 2000) and Robert Fink's "'Rigoroso:' The Rite of Spring and the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style" (Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 52, No. 2, 1999). The panel cited Barg's powerfully original discussion of issues of race and representation in the work of a paradigmatic American modernist; Fink was praised for his command of a wide range of source material and his lucidity in addressing issues of modernity.

Julius Rudel Receives Distinguished Achievement Award

On 5 April 2000 the renowned conductor Julius Rudel, a longtime champion of the music of Kurt Weill, was presented with the Kurt Weill Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award. Foundation President Kim H. Kowalke recognized Maestro Rudel at the end of the performance of Weill's Der Jasager, which Rudel conducted at New York City's Japan Society.

For twenty-two years the General Director of New York City Opera, Maestro Rudel has also served as Musical Director of the Kennedy Center, the Cincinnati May Festival, the Caramoor Festival, and the Buffalo Philharmonic. Having conducted more than 150 different operas in every major venue in the world, Rudel has no rival in breadth and depth of repertory.

Maestro Rudel has been responsible for introducing many of Kurt Weill's works to American audiences. In the late 1950s he included both Street Scene and Lost in the Stars in the repertory of New York City Opera at City Center; in 1965 he conducted The Threepenny Opera there, in German, with Kurt Kasznar, Martha Schlamme and George S. Irving in the cast. In 1980 a new adaptation of Der Silbersee served as his farewell to New York City Opera and was recorded by Nonesuch.

In May 1999 Maestro Rudel launched the American celebration of Weill's centenary when he conducted the U.S. premiere of Die Bürgschaft at Spoleto Festival USA. This spring the recording of that production will be released by EMI Classics, the premiere recording of the opera. Rudel has also recorded Lost in the Stars, Weill's Second Symphony, Concerto for Violin and Wind Instruments, and Kleine Dreigroschenmusik. In addition to his worldwide conducting activities, Rudel serves on the Board of the Kurt Weill Foundation, which he joined at the personal request of Lotte Lenya.

The first Distinguished Achievement Award was presented by the Kurt Weill Foundation in 1990 to Maurice Abravanel, Weill's musical director of choice during his lifetime. It has been presented only three times in the subsequent years: in 1996 to David Drew, whose contributions as editor, producer, and scholar helped lead to a worldwide rediscovery of the breadth of Weill's works; to acclaimed soprano Teresa Stratas, for her unforgettable Weill performances; and to Lys Symonette, Weill's musical assistant during his lifetime and indefatigable champion thereafter (both 1998).

Critical Edition of Die Dreigroschenoper is Published

(6 March 2000)

Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of the new critical edition of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), the acclaimed 1928 adaptation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. This is the first edited volume of the collected edition series, the Kurt Weill Edition (KWE). The volume is co-edited by Stephen Hinton, one of the pre-eminent Weill scholars active in the world today, and Edward Harsh, the Managing Editor of the KWE project.

Ever since its first production took Berlin by storm, Die Dreigroschenoper has been widely seen as one of the most important music-theatrical works of the twentieth-century as well as an icon of Weimar culture. Still, through seventy-two years and literally thousands of productions, the work had never been available in an authoritative edition of both text and music in a single volume. The new edition reconciles the many confusions of detail in the three key sources that emerged from that famed original 1928 production: Weill's manuscript, the published libretto, and the published piano-vocal score. But the editors went far beyond those three items to consult several dozen other documents, from the original, hand-written instrumental parts to Weill's correspondence with his publisher Universal Edition, to contemporaneous press reviews and recordings.

The result is a corrected, self-consistent version true to the historical state of the work that first so electrified its audiences. The edition presents not just the musical text but the complete dialogue and stage instructions in their proper sequence. Included are many features never before published. For instance, the original production included six pieces of instrumental stage music based upon a few of the work's most popular songs. The editors were able to reconstruct five of these from the instrumental parts and have included them in a special appendix. Another appendix offers additional strophes that could be used by performers as alternatives or supplements to four of the songs in the main text.

The new edition was used for the first time on the recently-released BMG recording by the Ensemble Modern and HK Gruber, a recording that has earned critical raves. Most of the same forces will perform the work live in concert on 6 March at the Konzerthaus Berlin.

Die Dreigroschenoper is the first edited volume of the KWE to be published. A facsimile edition of Weill's Dreigroschenoper manuscript appeared in 1996. The next two volumes in the series, The Firebrand of Florence and Weill's Chamber Music, are to appear in late 2000 or early 2001.

Further Information

1999 Kurt Weill Prizes Presented for Distinguished Scholarship in Music Theater

(8 December 1999)

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, American Musicological Society, American Society for Theatre Research, and Modern Language Association are pleased to announce the two winners of the 1999 Kurt Weill Prize for distinguished scholarship in twentieth-century music theater (including opera), the third awards since the Prize was established in 1995. Awards to the winners in the book and article categories were presented at the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award ceremony on 8 December at Lincoln Center's Kaplan Penthouse in New York City.

Jennifer Robertson's Takarazuka: Sexual Politics and Popular Culture in Modern Japan, published by the University of California Press (1998), was awarded a cash prize of $2,500 and a plaque. Takarazuka analyses the popular Japanese all-female Takarazuka Revue and its fanatical fans, describing the evolution of the Revue in response to socio-political changes in Japan. The prize committee praised Ms. Robertson's book for originality in topic and depth of research and noted that it contains a mass of information on a subject unknown to most Western readers.

The $500 prize winner in the article category was Michael V. Pisani's "A Kapustnik in the American Opera House: Modernism and Prokofiev's Love for Three Oranges" (The Musical Quarterly, Winter 1997). Writing about the 1921 premiere of Prokofiev's opera in Chicago, Pisani outlines the circumstances under which the work was composed and investigates musical and theatrical techniques employed in its creation. The committee cited the article's combination of discussion of influences on the opera and commentary on its reception.

Also named as finalists in the book category were Herbert Lindenberger's Opera in History: From Monteverdi to Cage (Stanford University Press); and Edward Baron Turk's Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald (University of California Press). Sharon Aronofsky Weltman's "Performing Goblin Market" (Essays on Transgressive Readings, The Edwin Mellon Press) was a finalist in the article category.

Call for Nominations: Kurt Weill Prize 2001

The Prize committee welcomes nominations for the 2001 Kurt Weill Prize, for works first published in calendar years 1999 and 2000. There will be two 2001 Kurt Weill Prize awards: the author of the winning "book" entry will receive a cash award of $2,500; and the author of the winning "article" entry will receive $500.

Media may include not only print (book, major scholarly article in a journal, chapter, or essay; critical edition), but also audio-recording, video-recording, multi-media projects, and on-line publications, provided there is a tangible scholarly component. Works addressing the American music theater are particularly encouraged.

Authors of nominated entries need not be members of the sponsoring organizations, nor are there citizenship or language restrictions. Nominations are solicited from individuals, publishers, scholarly societies, and institutions. The address of the author and five copies of the nominated work must be submitted before 30 April 2001 to the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, 7 East 20th Street, 3rd Floor, New York, NY 10003, USA.

Centenary Opening Ceremony

The Chemnitz Opera House hosted opening ceremonies for the Weill centenary immediately preceding the premiere of Der Weg der Verheissung on 13 June 1999. Professor Guy Stern, Secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, introduced distinguished speakers including Dr. Richard von Weizsäcker, former President of the Federal Republic of Germany; Professor Dr. Hans Joachim Meyer, Saxony's Minister for Arts and Sciences; Dr. Peter Seifert, Mayor of Chemnitz; and Professor Kim H. Kowalke, President of the Kurt Weill Foundation. The international array of guests joined in a centenary toast given by Dr. Peter Hanser-Strecker, President of Schott Musik International.

Der Weg der Verheissung

The world premiere of Der Weg der Verheissung in Chemnitz, Germany, on 13 June culminated two years of planning by its co-producers: Oper Chemnitz, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New Israeli Opera, and Opera Kraków. A cast of more than 200 filled the multi-level stage of the Chemnitz Opera House, in a production crafted by an international team consisting of John Mauceri, conductor (USA), Michael Heinicke, director (Germany), and David Sharir, designer (Israel). On commission from Meyer Weisgal in 1934, Weill, Franz Werfel, and Max Reinhardt created a monumental musical spectacle combining dramatized readings from the Torah with the story of a Jewish congregation on the eve of a pogrom. The full work had never been performed in its original German language version, although a shortened version entitled The Eternal Road was presented in New York in 1937. The centenary production will be seen around the world. After a Chemnitz revival in November 1999, the production will travel to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York (February-March 2000), the New Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv (April 2000), and Kraków (dates TBA), as well as participating in the German Pavilion at EXPO 2000 in Hannover (July 2000).

Writing of the premiere, the reviewer in the Stuttgarter Zeitung concluded: "An evening in the theater, as moving as it is disturbing, that strikes one speechless in the end: that is Der Weg der Verheissung." The New York Times columnist called the work "a powerful visual spectacle" and went on to say: "Just as the story builds to an emotional climax, so does Weill's score grow in strength as the drama unfolds. At times, the music is rich in references to Don Giovanni, to Nabucco, to Wagner and Mahler, even to Weill's own rendering of American Jazz but it also takes on a grandeur of its own."

Die Bürgschaft

In Charleston, SC, Spoleto Festival USA's production of Die Bürgschaft (30 May - 12 June 1999) served as the North American curtain raiser for WEILL 2000. Die Bürgschaft is Weill's most ambitious opera, removed from the stage by a Nazi campaign even though critics of the time hailed it as a new starting point for German opera. After initial productions in 1932, the work had been staged only twice in Berlin in 1957 and in Bielefeld in 1998 before the North American premiere in Charleston. Spoleto's production was conducted by Julius Rudel and directed by Jonathan Eaton (who had staged the Bielefeld production) and featured vivid contributions from baritones Frederick Burchinal and Dale Travis as Mattes and Orth. Writing about the production, the reviewer for the Wall Street Journal called Die Bürgschaft "a stunning work that knits together Weill's intense social and political concerns with compositional skill and invention of the highest order." A recording of the Spoleto production will be released on CD in early 2000.

WorldWide Weill Centenary Announced

June 1999 - May 2001 Celebration Will Include Stage Productions, Concerts, Recordings

The year 2000 marks the 100th anniversary of the composer Kurt Weill's birth in Dessau (2 March 1900) and fifty years since his death in New York City (3 April 1950). Best known by the general public for songs such as "Mack the Knife," "September Song," and "Alabama Song," Kurt Weill is a figure as central to the American musical theater as he is to the culture of Central Europe between the two World Wars. After early successes with stage works including the masterpiece Die Dreigroschenoper, Kurt Weill fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s, settling ultimately in the United States, where his partnerships with Maxwell Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Ogden Nash, and Langston Hughes led to such memorable Broadway works as Knickerbocker Holiday, Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, and Street Scene. In honor of his centenary, performing arts organizations and artists around the world are planning productions, performances and recordings of Weill's compositions, radio and television broadcasts, and scholarly symposia.

The centenary's official opening ceremony takes place on the afternoon of the world premiere of the complete Der Weg der Verheissung in Chemnitz (13 June 1999). The production, with a cast of 200, culminates two years of planning by the co-producers: Oper Chemnitz, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New Israeli Opera, and Opera Krakow. Weill collaborated with Franz Werfel and Max Reinhardt to create a monumental biblical drama combining the story of a Jewish congregation on the eve of a pogrom with dramatized readings from the Torah. The complete work has never been performed, although a shortened version of the work entitled The Eternal Road was presented in New York in 1937. During the centenary period, Der Weg der Verheissung will be seen by audiences in all of the participating producers' cities, as well as being featured as part of the German Pavilion at EXPO 2000 in Hannover (July 2000).

The Spoleto Festival USA American premiere of Die Bürgschaft on 30 May 1999 served as the North American curtain raiser for Weill's centenary, presaging many premieres and performances of works not heard in decades. The Firebrand of Florence, an operetta seen heretofore only in its initial 1945 Broadway production,will be performed in concert at the Vienna Konzerthaus with the RSO Wien (May 2000) and in London at the BBC Symphony Orchestra's Weill Festival at the Barbican Centre (14 - 16 January 2000). Another rarely seen Weill operetta, Der Kuhhandel, will be showcased in its American premiere at the Juilliard Opera Theatre (in a new English translation by Jeremy Sams, 11 - 15 April 2000) as well as in Weill's home town of Dessau (March 2000).

New York City will be the scene of a city-wide festival encompassing Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and many other large and small venues (February - April 2000). In addition to Der Weg der Verheissung at BAM, highlights will include the premiere at the New York Philharmonic of a new concert suite devised from Street Scene and a 12-hour free marathon, Wall-to-Wall Weill, at Symphony Space. The Konzerthaus Berlin is scheduling a major Weill festival (March - April 2000),including the German premiere of the "Street Scenes" concert suite and a concert performance of the rarely heard Der Protagonist. London's South Bank Centre will present a season-long tribute to Weill, and the annual Kurt-Weill-Fest in Dessau will be expanded to three weeks (February - March 2000).

Centenary audiences will see a host of productions of Die Dreigroschenoper, Street Scene, and Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, including a Staatsoper Stuttgart production of Mahagonny touring to the Edinburgh Festival (August 2000) and to the New Israeli Opera, Tel Aviv (October - November 2000). In addition, they can experience numerous performances of Weill's two symphonies, the concerto for violin and wind instruments, Die sieben Todsünden, and virtually every other piece written by the many-sided Weill. See the Centenary Calendar for a full listing.

New BMG recordings of Der Silbersee and Die Dreigroschenoper will appear in August and October 1999, respectively, among the numerous discs containing Weill compositions to be released. The first edited volume of the Kurt Weill Edition, Die Dreigroschenoper, will be available in December 1999. Books published during the Weill centenary will include How Can You Tell an American? Kurt Weill on Stage from Berlin to Broadway by Foster Hirsch (A. Knopf), Jürgen Schebera's Kurt Weill (Reinbek: Rowohlt) and Kurt Weill: A Life in Pictures and Documents (Overlook Press: David Farneth, editor). The last book will accompany "Musical Stages: Kurt Weill and His Century," a multi-media exhibition to be seen at the Berlin Akademie der Künste (March - April 2000) and at the newly renovated New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in early 2001.

Among other centenary accolades, the German government will issue a Weill 100th birthday stamp. Schott Musik International is planning activities including a tribute album of songs by noted contemporary composers, a special Kurt Weill edition of Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, and an internet website and event: "World Weill Day."

For more information, please contact:

Carolyn Weber
Kurt Weill Foundation for Music
Phone: (212) 505.5240, Fax: (212) 353.9663
cweber@kwf.org

Lotte Lenya Centenary celebrated in the Fall of 1998

Archival Recording Offered to Radio Producers

• Sunday, 18 October marks the centenary of the birth of Lotte Lenya (1898-1981), famed Austrian-American singing actress and widow of composer Kurt Weill (1900-1950). Between August and October of this year, the life of Lenya, an outstanding musical, theatrical, and film artist in her own right, will be celebrated in the following series of events and publications:
  
• a video series at the Museum of Television and Radio, New York
  
• a film series at the National Film Theatre, London
  
• television rebroadcast of a documentary on her life by Hessischer Rundfunk, Frankfurt
  
• a centennial recording collection
  
• book publications in Germany, England, and America.
  

Lenya's voice will forever be associated with Kurt Weill's music, especially The Threepenny Opera and The Seven Deadly Sins. Her recordings of Weill and Brecht have stood the test of time. But thousands also remember her performances on film, notably as James Bond's archenemy Rosa Klebb in From Russia With Love, and in the theater as Fräulein Schneider in the original Broadway production of Cabaret.

Weill Lenya TV retrospective

Beginning 18 September, New York's Museum of Television Radio will salute the life and works of Kurt Weill in a series entitled "Threepennies and a Touch of Venus: The World of Kurt Weill." Drawing material from archives in the U.S. and Europe, the screenings will explore the rich legacy of Weill's musical output as well as recognize the centenaries of Lenya and Brecht (1898-1956). The series falls into two sections: "Berlin to Broadway" highlights several made-for-television adaptations of Weill's musicals and "Weill+Lenya+Brecht" features packages of rare clips, interviews, profiles, and performances. A total of 39 screenings will take place over ten weeks, Thursdays through Sundays.

London's National Film Theatre "Friday Favourite" Series Honors Lenya
Every month the National Film Theatre celebrates the work of an actor who has made a significant contribution to the cinema with a screening of their key films each Friday. Recent Friday Favourites have included Grace Kelly, W.C. Fields and Kevin Spacey. In October the National Film Theatre will celebrate Lenya's centenary with screenings of The Threepenny Opera, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, and From Russia with Love (other titles tba).

Hessischer Rundfunk rebroadcasts Lenya documentary on 18 October

At noon on 18 October, "Lenya, ein erfundenes Leben" will be rebroadcast on German television on HR3, to honor Lenya's centenary. Directed by Barrie Gavin, narrated by HK Gruber and produced by Hessischer Rundfunk and Arte Musica in 1994, this affectionate hour-long portrait includes contemporaneous documentation as well as footage of Lenya "in action" singing, speaking, and also reciting German and English poetry.

Bear Family Records issues Lenya centennial collection

Bear Family Records of Hambergen, Germany, honors Lenya with an elaborate edition containing eleven CDs and a generously illustrated book. Included are Lenya's complete commercial recordings from her first Orchestrola 78s dating from 1929 to a 45-rpm recording issued by Metromedia in 1970. The collection also contains previously unreleased material from Lenya's legacy: selections from her radio and television appearances, the first half of her legendary 1965 Carnegie Hall concert, and a deeply moving recitation of Brecht's famous poem Kinderkreuzzug. The accompanying book offers a richly documented chronicle of Lenya's life, including essays or reminiscences by such friends as Harold Prince and Teresa Stratas, two comprehensive biographical essays and the first complete Lenya discography. The booklet will contain over 200 photos and documents, many newly discovered and published for the first time.

Lenya, the Legend: A Pictorial Autobiography

Lenya, the Legend will be launched on 10 October by The Overlook Press in the U.S. and by Thames Hudson in the U.K. More than 300 photographs are accompanied by a narrative comprising Lenya's own words taken from her interviews, letters, and other writings. Lenya's voice brings these captivating glimpses into her world on stage and off to life in the witty, caustic, and insightful manner that is hers alone.

Compiled and edited by David Farneth, Director of the Weill-Lenya Research Center, the book spans Lenya's six-decade career, covering her stage and movie roles, recording sessions, concert appearances, and awards. Also included are publicity photos, photos of informal gatherings with friends, documents related to Lenya's life and career, and a complete chronology. This is an intimate and revealing portrait a tribute her fans and theater buffs won't want to miss.

Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya

The German edition of the Weill-Lenya letters, originally published in English by the University of California Press in English in 1996, will be published by Kiepenheuer Witsch Verlag, Cologne, in September this year. Critically acclaimed as "possibly the best-edited correspondence" (New York Times), "virtually a self-contained dual biography" (Civilization), and winner of the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, Speak Low was selected among the best books of the year by the Financial Times and New York Times.

Co-edited by Lys Symonette and Kim Kowalke, Speak Low is a chronicle of the lives and loves of Weill and Lenya between 1924 and 1950. The letters first in German and then in highly flavored English are uninhibited, intimate, and irreverent. Occasionally Weill would jot down a melody with a risqu? lyric. Lenya would sketch a charmingly vulgar or erotic drawing. They gossiped, complained about colleagues and collaborators, railed at rivals, plotted career moves, and griped about failed projects. The letters are also filled with artistic news, reactions to world events, reports on work-in-progress, and reflections on the creative process. They provide a nonchalant cultural history and a backstage view of music and theater on both sides of the Atlantic.

Special Archival Recording for Radio Producers

The Kurt Weill Foundation invites radio producers to celebrate Lenya's centenary in the month of October. To that end, we are distributing a special recording from our archival holdings to radio stations worldwide. It features Lenya's speaking and singing voice excerpted from interviews and historical recordings, which can be used in combination with existing Lenya CDs for a truly "special" celebration of the legendary star. The Foundation will also publish a broadcast schedule of all Lenya radio and television programs on the worldwide web. We ask radio producers to forward program details for this schedule.

For the special recording, publicity photos of Lotte Lenya, and further information on any of the above events, please contact

Joanna Lee at the
Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, Inc.
7 East 20th Street
New York, NY 10003.
Phone: (212) 505 5240; Fax: (212) 353 9663.

Museum of Television and Radio

Beginning 18 September 1998, New York's Museum of Television and Radio will salute the life, work, and collaborations of Kurt Weill in a ten-week series entitled "Threepennies and One Touch of Venus." Drawing from archives in the U.S. and Europe, the screening series will explore the rich legacy of Weill's musical output, which gave the world such memorable tunes as "Mack the Knife" and "September Song." In addition, the series will recognize the centenary of Lotte Lenya and Bertolt Brecht. The series falls into two sections: "Berlin to Broadway" will highlight several made-for-television adaptations of Weill's musicals (some of them never before seen in this country), which will screen on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. "Weill+Lenya+Brecht" will feature packages of rare clips, interviews, profiles, and performances by and about these three icons of Weimar-era culture, which will screen on Thursday and Friday evenings.

Weill Festival at Eastman School of Music

The Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY will present a Weill Festival from 11 to 14 November 1998. The Festival celebrates the centenary of Lotte Lenya and the arrival of the holograph scores of Weill's European works at Eastman's Sibley Music Library, on loan from Universal Edition, Vienna. The Eastman Wind Ensemble, Eastman Philharmonia, and the Eastman Virtuosi will perform the following Weill works: the Violin Concerto, arrangements of songs from the 1920s, Symphony No. 2, and the Four Walt Whitman Songs. The highlight of the Festival will be the inaugural Lotte Lenya Singing Competition, open to all students at the University of Rochester, which recognizes excellence in the performance of music for the theater, in its broadest sense, including opera, operetta, and American musical theater. The winner will receive an award of $5,000. One of the judges for this inaugural competition will be Ms. Teresa Stratas, the foremost interpreter of Weill's music today; she will also receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Rochester on 13 November. A day-long symposium, entitled "ReLocating Kurt Weill," will be held on 14 November at Howard Hanson Hall, featuring speakers Daniel Albright, Michael Kater, Kim Kowalke, Edward Harsh, Jürgen Thym, and Stephen Hinton.

©2007 The Kurt Weill Foundation.