The radio series “American Jewish Music from the Milken Archive” has added The Eternal Road to its archives. With a spoken introduction by Leonard Nimoy and Neil Levin, Episode 3, part 2 (“Unlearned Lessons from the Bible”) features about 45 minutes of excerpts from the recording issued in 2003 as a Naxos CD (front and back covers at right). The Naxos recording (catalogue number 8.559402) contains about 75 minutes from the score, or roughly a third of its total length.

Weill’s largest work, The Eternal Road premiered in 1937 in the Manhattan Opera House, directed by Max Reinhardt. The show’s running costs were so high that it proved impossible to sustain, and it closed after 153 performances despite wide acclaim. It has been revived once, in a 1999 production by Oper Chemnitz which toured to New York, Tel Aviv, and Hannover. Recently, an abridged concert version, Die Verheissung, has been made available to give performing organizations a chance to showcase the work without the extensive preparations required to stage it.

Features

Short documentary film on the Milken recording

Learn more about The Eternal Road

Learn more about Die Verheissung