October 23, 2013: The 2013 Kurt Weill Book Prize for outstanding scholarship in music theater since 1900, carrying a cash prize of $5,000, has been awarded to Stephen Hinton, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Music at Stanford University, for his book Weill’s Musical Theater: Stages of Reform. Published in 2012 by the University of California Press, Hinton’s musicological study offers the most comprehensive overview yet of Weill’s output for the stage. In tracing Weill’s extraordinary journey as a theatrical composer, comparing his works to each other while situating them within larger contexts, Hinton demonstrates how Weill’s experiments with a range of genres, forms, and styles constitute a continuously innovative and coherent development, from his first children’s pantomime and early operas through his final Broadway musical. Hinton’s long-term engagement with Weill has resulted in several other essential volumes, including Kurt Weill: The Threepenny Opera for the Cambridge Opera Handbooks series and the critical edition of the score and text of Die Dreigroschenoper for the Kurt Weill Edition.

In addition to the book prize, a $2,000 Kurt Weill Prize for outstanding article has been awarded to Christopher Chowrimootoo for his article “Bourgeois Opera: Death in Venice and the Aesthetics of Sublimation,” published in the Cambridge Opera Journal in 2011. The prize panel commended the essay for taking on “a work, a composer, a defined period in the history of a genre, and a larger critical approach and attitude towards musical style and meaning that potentially touches all scholars of 20th-century music.” Chowrimootoo, an Assistant Professor of Musicology and Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, also received the Royal Musical Association’s Jerome Roche Prize for his article.

Awarded biennially by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, the Kurt Weill Prize recognizes distinguished scholarship in music theater since 1900, including opera and dance. Books and articles published in 2011-2012 were eligible for the 2013 prize; nominations were reviewed by a panel of music and theater experts.

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If you’d like more information about this topic, please contact Kate Chisholm at the Kurt Weill Foundation: (212) 505-5240 or kchisholm@kwf.org.