Eldergays, tell me about Kurt Weill

OP, do you know about the 'minor' chords?

I don't know the technicalities about it but Weill's talent was in knowing how to use them to convey the less-pleasant and melancholy aspects of life and its characters.

Always will have a special place in my heart as his Threepenny Opera was the first CD I bought. Cheesy reason I know haha. Discovered with delight Mrs. Garrett was in it!

Wrote some big hits like "3 Penny Opera" in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, but his work became suspect by ascending Nazi party. He was married to Lotte Lenya; he was Jewish, she was not, but both left Germany and came to the US where he wrote some hit musicals including "Lady in the Dark" for Gertrude Lawrence, "Love Life" for Nanette Fabray and "One Touch of Venus" starring Mary Martin, also "Knickerbocker Holiday", famous for Walter Huston's rendition of "September Song". Weill died quite young at only age 50. He was also a nudist back in Germany.

[quote] … nudist… Germany…

Germans aren't uptight about their body like Americans are.

What's Kurt Weill without some of his music. Here's Charlotte Rae from the original 1954 Off Broadway as Mrs. Peachum.

[quote] I feel like Kurt Weill doesn't get enough love when it comes to the pantheon of Golden Age composers like Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, Rodgers & Hart/Hammerstein etc.

Couldn't agree more--Weill was as gifted and unique as any of them. His 1947 Broadway opera "Street Scene" is a magnificent achievement. "Lady in the Dark" has a wholly wonderful score. And then there's his loony and musically glorious German opera "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," which the Met did in the '70s and '80s and which has become a part of the repertoire at international opera houses.

Let's post your favorite Weill songs / recordings. This is just GORGEOUS.

this one's fun

"Speak Low" is one of the finest songs ever written for American theatre, IMHO.

I'll see if I can find a version that does it justice to post here.

The entire score of the Threepenny Opera is genius -- I've always thought the collaboration with Weill was by far the best thing Brecht ever did.

Here's the ultimate earworm from the Threepenny Opera... so simple, but unforgettable.

Or if you prefer it swinging and in English:

He was a thoroughly trained conservatory musician. One of less than a handful of Broadway composers who did their own orchestrations. My love for his melodies goes beyond reason.

When I was little I thought this was just the height of wrenching drama. I’d listen to it again and again.

It sounds a bit overwrought to my ears now.

The wonderful Carola Neher, who came to a sad end. Her son only found out his mother's identity in 1975, she died in a Soviet prison camp in 1942. From the film

Judy Collins, Nina Simone and even Zimmy were all crazy for "Pirate Jenny."

^^ that vid is very unpleasant sounding

Bea Arthur's take on a great Weill song.

^^ intended for the nasal, staccato screeching in R15 song

I give up.

Just ignore me... SAVE YOURSELVES!

The 1931 German film version of The Threepenny Opera is one of very favorites. Someone had made a YouTube compilation of all the songs from it and I listened to it over and over. But it finally got removed.

R21, you can get this on Amazon, there is a companion CD called "O Moon of Alabama", they are early recordings many by the original singers, mostly in German but also some of Lenya singing some of his Broadway songs.

R22 - thanks for the info!

Bea sings "Pirate Jenny"

From the only major revival of "Lady in the Dark"

From the Encores! production of "One Touch of Venus"

"Speak Low" from the Encores! "One Touch of Venus"

Beautiful!

I wrote my master's thesis on Kurt Weill In America. His reinvention of himself for the American audience was a true example of how we are "a nation of immigrants".

One of my favorites.

I was first introduced to Weill's music when I was a college student in the early 70s in Boston and went to see an unforgettable review called Berlin to Broadway. It was in tryouts there before moving to NY. I bought the album and played it endlessly and I'm still waiting for someone to put it on a CD. I don't think any of the numbers are available in any other media. Any eldergays remember it?

[quote] "Eldergays, tell me about Kurt Weill

OP, Is Kurt Weill a foxhole you went down because you remember a neighbor playing his music years ago and you thought, at that particular moment in you life, wtf?

Or your brother once mentioned him and you never forgot the name and decided to Google him?

You always have such wonderful, magical moments in your life and so openly share them to delight of thousands. Please, tell us the magical moment you discovered Kurt Weill.

Yes r31, I know that recording. The 70s saw a big Weill revival. Personally, I’m mostly over that sinister fox trot schtick but Nina Simone’s “Pirate Jenny” still scares the crap out of me. Remember the Lars Von Trier movie adaptation?

Betty Lynn does excellent versions of Surabaya Johnny and Pirate Jenny.

Who hurt R32? ❤️

[quote]Betty Lynn does excellent versions of Surabaya Johnny...

R34 During the 90s (around the time of the Serbo-Croatian war), the BF & I went to see Betty Lynn at the Bottom Line in NYC. The venue required that we sit at tables with others, and we ended up seated at a four-top with a young gay couple who were obviously on a first date. One guy seemed laid back while the other chatted on nonstop with lots of hand/arm gestures (he was obviously nervous). Unfortunately, constant blabbering often reveals more about you than you intended.

Blabberer: “Oh, I’m so excited to see Betty Buckley. She’s my favorite! And she’s so versatile. She can sing rock and blues and folk and soul as well as her Broadway songs. Oh, I hope she sings Meadowlark - that’s one of her best songs. Well, all her songs are great. All of them! Well, except for that ONE... Oh my god, I hope she doesn’t sing THAT one. I really, really hate that song. Oh please god, don’t let her sing THAT ONE one...

Laid Back Guy: “What song is that?”

Blabberer: “ Oh, it’s some old song. Really stupid... SARAJEVO JOHNNY!

Laid Back Guy slowly looks at us and rolls his eyes.

The Blabberer was Andy Cohen, BTW.

My favorite of all his American songs.

It's a beautiful song, R38, but I'm not sure I can quite handle Julie Andrews doing Weill. It's like having Anne Murray cover Nirvana.

^^^

A mulatto, eh?

An albino, eh?

A mosquito, eh?

My libido, eh?

Surprised that Ute Lemper has not been mentioned yet

Every 10 to 20 years Weill gets rediscovered, Thank God.

I've tried with Ute Lemper, but I just don't get it. It's all surface with her. All indicating. She's so over the top and cartoonish.

When Weill was sworn in as an American citizen, he told the court that he pronounced his name as while, not vile, the German pronunciation. His wishes are usually respected.

I'll give you the elder 50something experience on Kurt Weill. It's not music I could identify or a name I learned growing up in suburban 60s and 70s. I only discovered via taking part in big city gay life in the 80s and I only discovered Lady in the Dark in the 90s. Is that what you wanted, OP. Oh wait, I guess it was just a "DL Twee" way of starting a thread topic.

I'm just six months away from being 70 and I discovered Weill in the 60s. I can tell you from all I've read over years that the big five -- Rodgers, Kern, Porter, Berlin and the tragically short lived Gershwin -- regarded Weill as their equal if not their superior. He was the only one who did his own orchestrations. No Russell Bennett nor Hans Spialek for him.

The sheer confidence of Lady in the Dark - a musical about a heroine obsessed with the perfect melody she hears only in her dreams and can never remember awake and then delivers it at the end, My Ship. To promise great song for three hours and then deliver one - amazing.

I've always been partial to the old German renditions.

Dee Dee Bridgewater -- one of the great jazz vocalists of modern times -- with "This Is New "

I much prefer Kurt Vile

Why should eldergays be more knowledgeable about Kurt Weill? He died in 1950. Unless posters here are 100 years old.

[quote] It's a beautiful song, [R38], but I'm not sure I can quite handle Julie Andrews doing Weill. It's like having Anne Murray cover Nirvana.

The song was famously introduced by Gertrude Lawrence, who was hardly earthier as a singer than Julie. In fact, Julie played Lawrence in "Star!" (and sang "My Ship" in that).

Listen to Lawrence's original version of the song.

[quote]r51 Why should eldergays be more knowledgeable about Kurt Weill? He died in 1950. Unless posters here are 100 years old.

R53 lol

I'm Miss Elliott's maid.

Gentlemen, I'm afraid

Your loyalty we must be testing.

She cannot be seen. She's resting.

But she wishes to thank you all for the serenade.

R52 Greta Keller also did several versions of that song.

Oh, how thrilling to be the world's inamorata.

Who is this Kurt Weill that you speak of?

Mr Weill and some boy

The mister who once was the master of two

Would make of his mistress his missus.

But he's missed out on missus

For the mistress is through--

What a mess of a mish-mash this is!

Jesus Christ, how old do you think we are?

Jessye Norman delivers a delicious Mack the Knife live in concert. Starts off slow, then gets a little friskier.

Dawn Upshaw did a lovely My Ship on her Weill disc - this is a live version, not quite as poised but still great.

Mother was the most modern women in Cincinnati, plus it was her fortune, not father's. After the crash, there wasn't much use my entering the firm, so mother sent me to The Institut für Sexualwissenschaft in 1931, to explore my atypical bohemian sexuality. I fell in with a fast crowd, and met all the artists in the demi mondaine of Berlin. Kurt was there, and we had a go at fucking but weren't a match. He had a big bent cock and shot massive loads, but he was a top when he went gay for a fella.

And what about Kurt Vile from WAR ON DRUGS? Maybe he needs his own thread. Kurt Vile's released a new single with John Prine.

Georgia Brown's album of Weill songs is one of my favourites.

While Weill might not be as popular as some of the other greats you list, OP, I do think that he'll continue to be performed perhaps longer than any of the rest - especially the works he cowrote with Brecht.

I love this 1933 French version of Surabaya Johnny by Marianne Oswald

One of SNL's very finest musical moments...

R67 amazing. NOBODY sings like that anymore. Brilliantly bends most notes.

[quote]R67 I love this version of Surabaya Johnny by [bold]Marianne Oswald[/bold]

I thought this said [italic]Marie Osmond.

Megan's SJ

[quote]r68 One of SNL's very finest musical moments...

An oddly religious song to sing on an irreverent comedy show (?)

I'm sorry I missed the L.A. Mahagonny with Audra and Patti. I don't remembered how well-received it was, but it would have been fun to see even if it was a misfire.

La Stratas

Well, I don't know how religious it is, r72, since it raises the possibility of God forgetting us and we're out here lost in the stars without a guiding force.

Audra's...

Marianne Faithfull

Patti

Here's a version of "Alabama Song" from a 1994 program called "September Songs - The Music of Kurt Weill."

Let's go to Benares, where the sun is shining.

My first exposure to an overview of Weill was the 2-record cast recording of Berlin to Broadway : A Musical Voyage with Kurt Weill. I remember it being so evocative when he (Lanning?) says that Weill was going to flood his Huck Finn musical with music. Flood with music...

this may be of interest

I'm not always a fan of original performances from the 40s as they can sound so old fashioned and stilted, but I LOVE the original Speak Low with Mary Martin and Kenny Baker. Just gorgeous.

Love Life, 1948, starring Nanette Fabray and Ray Middleton on Broadway, was widely admired and considered a precurser of the later concept musicals of Prince and Sondheim. The book and lyrics were by Alan Jay Lerner. But it wasn't recorded at the time because of a strike (Where's Charley? suffered similarly). The orchestrations didn't survive intact, although they existed (anyone feel free to step in and correct me as necessary).

But the score has finally been fully reconstructed and was scheduled to be produced at Encores! last season. That was canceled because of COVID but Encores! has said it will be first up when they can perform again and it will almost certainly will be recorded.

Weill did everything. He was a “real” classical composer—he wrote operas, concertos, ballets and symphonies—who ALSO was a successful Broadway composer, someone who wrote popular standards. Did any other 20th century composer have that kind of range?

I think Gershwin came close. Had he lived longer, who knows? Both were overflowing with creative talent.

Leonard Bernstein, too.

Gershwin, when living in Paris in the 1920s, supposedly went to Ravel and asked for lessons. Ravel knew who he was from his Broadway fame and asked how much Gershwin had earned from his music the previous year, After Gershwin told him, Ravel supposedly said:

"It is I, Mr. Gershwin, who should be studying with you."

But he did take him on as a student.

I first "met" Weill in college, where the theatre department did both Street Scene and Happy End. Later I discovered the the Widow Weill, Lotte Lenya, on the original Broadway cast album of Cabaret -and that her songs were very much in the Weill style.

Let's throw some love to Lost In the Stars -based on the novel Cry the Beloved Country. It's about racial injustice and the death penalty in South Africa. An amazing score.

And here is the legend herself singing "Lost In the Stars."

R89, there were so many times I started to post Todd Duncan's Lost in the Stars but I was too lazy. I did post it in another thread recently. Thank you. And thank you, r90.

I first became aware of Weill via Ute Lemper and saw her live in concert singing his songs. I recorded the soundtrack from a TV special of her songs which comes off better than her own Weill recordings. I think she was better live.

A ravishing Weill waltz, Foolish Heart, sung Stratas.

Miss Melba's Trouble Man

Das Chicago Song

R85, Weill, Gershwin, and Bernstein are pretty much the Big Three -and the Only Three. Gershwin was mostly self-taught, but his talent made up for what many considered "errors" in his orchestrations and notations. But Bernstein (as formally trained as they come) revered Gershwin and considered him an absolute genius. Weill was also extraordinarily gifted, but he got the reputation for being cerebral and his popularity peaked in the late 1950s. As a previous poster noted, every decade or so he is rediscovered and everyone wonders why such wonderful music isn't more popular...

Never cared for Weill. Three Penny Opera is tedious and nearly unwatchable on stage, IMO. My husband and I have left a couple of very good productions at intermission. My Ship and Mack the Knife are just about the only Weill songs that have entered the popular American Songbook vocabulary. And with reason. For those of us immersed in Broadway from the mid-1960s to the present, Weill is out of synch and NOT musical theatre. And I don't detect any lingering legacy, do you?

What about Blitzstein?

Nobody has mentioned Johnny Johnson, his first Broadway show, a brilliant score which received a wonderful studio recording in 1956 starring Lenya, Thomas Stewart, Evelyn Lear, Burgess Meredith and many other very fine artists It's conducted by Samuel Matlovski, one of Weill's favorite conductors of his music. I have refrained from posting excerpts of the recording here before because the clips Sony Music provided on youtube have dreadful sound. Maybe you'll want to check them out anyway.

By the way, over 20 years before Marc Blitzstein's hit off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera at the The Theatre de Lys on Christopher Street, which launched the modern interest in Weill, 3PO had a full production on Broadway in 1933. It was a big flop and ran for only two weeks.

[quote]My husband and I have left a couple of very good productions [of 3PO] at intermission.

Obviously, then, they weren't very good productions, Which is not unusual. Very hard show to get right today. And which intermission? You know it's in three acts with two intermissions, right?

Ann!

Have those Ben Bagley Revisited recordings been mentioned? Some of them are laughably bad.

Janet!

Are they raaaaaaaally, r102?

Marc Blitzstein was another talented musician who straddled Broadway and the concert hall -Like Weill and Gershwin he died young, and is largely forgotten today beyond his contributions to Threepenny Opera. Unlike the others mentioned, he never had a popular hit with his own music.

I was fortunate to see Juno at Encores a few years back -It was worth a trip to New York.

R104 Kate sings as badly as Edna Everage.

I once knew a guy we all called Margaret. Fire Island, 1970s.

I never miss a Ben Bagley recording session.

In 1974 my friend and I found Ben Bagley's phone number in the Queen's phone book. We called him up and he answered. We said we loved his albums. He invited us over and we spent a delightful afternoon with him. His apartment was decorated with hundreds of tiny little mirrors covering all the walls. He served us tea. It was all so sweet and civilized and GAY!!!

I appreciated the use of "Speak Low" in the great German film Phoenix that came out a few years ago. Not a great performance of it by any means, but excellent for the movie.

R109 Meetings like that should be treasured.

I was invited to a tête-à-tête with one of my city's performing stars in the late 70s.

It was all very glamorous and when gaylings prod me for details all I can tell them is that we drank Creme de Menthe and the house was 'somewhere on that particular street'. All the details of that witty conversation are lost in the haze of my faulty memory.

And my story at r109 is absolutely true except that it was the phone book for Queens, New York City, not Her Majesty's phone book.

Obviously, then, they weren't very good productions, Which is not unusual. Very hard show to get right today. And which intermission? You know it's in three acts with two intermissions, right?

We left at the first intermission. So dreary. Never again.

[quote] three acts with two intermissions

The theatre companies here adapt the three act plays into two acts. Modern audiences don't like that 9th century practice of standing around over multiple intervals. And it's not like an opera where the divas have to rest their vocal chords.

** ^ that 19th century practice**

Five acts of Giuseppe Verdi is three acts too long.

R109 - that is such a sweet story!

Has John Kander said or written much about Weill? I have to assume he considers Weill a chief influence on his sound.

R82 Thank you for posting that Weill interview with Ethan Mordden who is so cultured, prolific and brilliant. I have many of his books in my library but haven't read them in years. He left Riedel and that idiot woman Susan Haskins in the dust with his erudition.

Why wasn't Riedel wearing socks?

Other than Bobby Darin's version of "Mack the Knife", I think the first Weill song I heard was Judy Garland singing "It Never Was You", recorded live on set of the movie "I Could Go On Singing."

I wonder whose idea doing this number was? One take was all they did with only the piano you see on stage as accompaniment. It's freaking incredible.

It Never Was You is one of my favorite songs of all time. And I didn't discover Garland's version until years after I had first heard it.

[quote]The theatre companies here adapt the three act plays into two acts.

Yeah, but 3PO isn't a play It's a three act opera or musical, depending on where you want to place it in the overall compendium of musical theater. Regardless, it has three specific act ending musical climaxes. Ignoring those endings and putting in a false break is criminal.

LoveMusik

[quote] … putting in a false break is criminal

You sound like a purist. Would you permit a German opera to be sung in English?

I generally prefer operas in their original languages but there are exceptions. Hansel and Gretel usually doesn't suffer in translation, at least at the Met, and the 1970 Reginald Goodall conducted production of The Ring for the English National Opera was a remarkable achievement.

But it seems to be irrelevant at this point since most houses now use some form of super or subtitles and unfortunately most singers have now been taught to modify their vowel sounds in such an unnatural way that they are usually incomprehensible in any language. Give me Dorothy Kirsten or Dawn Upshaw any day for superb but unaffected singing.

Thank you, R123.

[quote] most singers have now been taught to modify their vowel sounds in such an unnatural way that they are usually incomprehensible in any language.

So is that a good thing or not?

R269, um....Speak Low....September Song....Alabama Song... Surabaya Johnny...etc.

Judy's Liza Elliot...

R117: I'm sure Ethan Mordden would be grateful for your kind words, but he has said several times that Haskins and Riedel were ideal interviewers who always came prepared and asked questions that would lead to a lively show.

Once you've been on various interview shows, you realize that how the host(s) run the show controls how you come off. Many interviewers ask lame questions or are wrapped up in themselves, and the result is boring no matter how lively the interviewee might be.

R109, thanks for sharing that charming vignette. I have many Bagley CDs. The quality may vary wildly, but there are gems to be found, and the camp value alone is worthwhile (and the liner notes are often surreal). I always wondered what Mr Bagley was like as a person.

R117, I have many Mordden books on my shelves also, and have read most of them more than once. He never disappoints, and I relish his mix of fact and opinion. His writing has informed my understanding of musical theater (and Hollywood) history. I'd recommend his books to anyone.

R128. I have Ethan Morddan books on my bookshelf, too, and enjoyed the earlier ones. The last one was unreadable.

Johnny's Song