Kurt Weill Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
Kurt Weill (March 2, 1900 - April 3, 1950) was a German composer.He was born in Dessau, Germany and died in New York.
After growing up in a religious Jewish family in Germany, Weill fled Nazi Germany in March 1933. He was seen as a particular threat by the Nazi authorities as a prominent Jewish composer. His later works in German caused near riots in the theatres orchestrated by Nazi party members. He had no option but to leave, so he went on to moved to Paris and in 1935 further on to the United States. The US had been his dream, his fantasyland of democracy, the free world. When the liner steamed into New York harbour, Weill left behind his life in Germany. He believed most of his work to be destroyed, and he never spoke German again, with the exception of letters to his parents who had escaped to Israel.
He married actress Lotte Lenya twice: in 1926 and, after their divorce in 1933, again in 1937. Lenya took great care to support Weill's work, and after his death she took it upon herself to raise awareness of his music. She formed the Kurt Weill Foundation.
His most well known work is the Threepenny Operawritten in collaboration with Bertolt Brecht. This was a reworking of John Gay's The Beggars Opera It contains perhaps the most famous song associated with Weill "Mac the Knife" performed by many including Louis Armstrong Oddly, his American work has a much lower profile. Two of these musicals in particular, Lady in the Dark and Love Life are seen as seminal works in the development of the American musical. Weill himself strived to find a new way of creating an American opera, that would be both commercially and artistically successful. Weill's work with Brecht although successful came to an end with the two separating over differing politics. Weill made the comment that he was unable to "set the communist part manifesto to music."
List of works.
- 1925 - Concerto for Violin and Wind Ensemble op. 12
- 1927 - Der Neue Orpheus and Royal Palace
- 1927 - Mahagonny (Songspiel) (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1928 - Der Zar lasst sich photographieren
- 1928 - Die Dreigroschenoper, The Threepenny Opera (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1929 - Der Lindberghflug - first version with music by Hindemith and lyrics by (Brecht)
- 1929 - Das Berliner Requiem (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1929 - Happy End (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1929 - Der Lindberghflug - second version, music entirely by Weill and lyrics again by (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1930 - Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1930 - Der Jasager (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1932 - Der Burgshaft/The Pledge (Caspar Neher)
- 1933 - Der Silbersee - the Silver Lake
- 1933 - The Seven Deadly Sins (Bertolt Brecht)
- 1934 - Symphony no. 2
- 1934 - Der Kuhhandel, My Kingdom for a Cow (Robert Vambery)
- 1934 - My Kingdom for a Cow
- 1936 - Johnny Johnson - (Paul Green)
- 1937 - The Eternal Road - (Desmond Carter)
- 1938 - Knickerbocker Holiday (Maxwell Anderson)
- 1938 - Railroads on Parade (Edward Hungerford)
- 1940 - Ballad of Magna Carta (Maxwell Anderson)
- 1941 - Lady in the Dark (Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin)
- 1941 - Fun to be Free Pagaent
- 1943 - One Touch of Venus (Ogden Nash)
- 1945 - The Firebrand of Florence (Ira Gershwin)
- 1945 - Down in the Valley
- 1947 - Street Scene (Elmer Rice and Langston Hughes)
- 1948 - Love Life (Alan Jay Lerner)
- 1949 - Lost in the Stars (Maxwell Anderson)
- 1950 - Huckleberry Finn (Maxwell Anderson) Unfinished.
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