Word: weill
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...going the way of all universally accepted satire: it is becoming bland and there is little that can be done to reverse the trend. However much the actors try to squeeze out all the spleen in the play, the audience insists on ignoring them and converting Brecht and Weill into Lerner and Loewe...
...Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny was not the most successful stage work of Playwright Bertolt Brecht and Composer Kurt Weill (The Threepenny Opera has consistently attracted more attention), but it was by all odds their most ambitious collaboration. At its 1930 premiere in Leipzig, its jazzy score and slangy libretto, combined with Nazi-inspired resentment of its Jewish composer and its left-wing theme, touched off one of the worst riots in the history of the German theater. Rarely performed since then, Mahagonny was revived last week by the Heidelberg Municipal Theater in a stark and moving...
Caricature Capitalism. Both Weill and Brecht, recalls Weill's widow, Singer Lotte Lenya, were fascinated by the America they knew "from books, movies, popular songs, headlines-the America of the garish Twenties, with its Capones, Texas Guinans, Aimee Semple MacPhersons, Ponzis, and the Murderess Ruth Snyder." The mythical city of Mahagonny (pronounced mah-hah-ge-nee) was a symbol of that imaginary America, and the city's reason for being was summed up in the name of its principal hotel: the Here-You-May-Do-Anything Inn. The opera's songs marked a turning point for Composer...
Corrosive Iridescence. Mahagonny's enthusiastic reception suggests that twelve years after its composer's death, it may yet take its place beside Threepenny Opera as an operatic staple. Composer Weill may not have caught the true flavor of jazz-age America that he found so attractive, but in seeking it he caught something else-his corrosively iridescent music recalls the cold cynicism of his own generation of Europeans, caught midway between two wars...
...West and East) are as Hitler intended, largely judenfrei-free of Jews. Before the advent of the Third Reich, Jews numbered 760,000 in a nation of 66 million; German life and art were immeasurably enriched by the work of such Jews as Physicist Albert Einstein and Composer Kurt Weill. Thousands fled the Nazis; thousands more died in the concentration camps. There are now no more than 30,000 Jews-including some 5,000 who escaped from Eastern Europe-among West Germany's 55 million people, and only 1,900 among East Germany's 17 million...