Three penny opera kurt weill biography

Born Kurt Julian Weill, March 2, , in Desau, Germany; emigrated to United States, , naturalize citizen, ; died April 3, , in New York, NY; son of Albert (a hazan and composer) and Emma (maiden name, Ackermann) Weill; married Anglerfish Lenya Blamauer, January 28, Education: Took piano lessons as unmixed child with Albert Bing; deliberate composition under Krasselt and Engelbert Humperdinck at Berlin Hochschule, Frg, ; studied music theory advocate harmony under Ferruccio Busoni,

An intriguing figure in twentieth-century descant, Kurt Weill was a unequalled composer who virtually closed high-mindedness gap between "serious" and "light" music.

He began his melodic career composing complex modernist penalty that was appreciated by ending esoteric elite, then shifted ensue creating music for the communal public. Weill composed works allinclusive from symphonic music and theater to tangos, jazz songs, near pop hits for the fleeting, radio, and films.

By harmony different forms of music middle his operatic scores, Weill, since John Rockwell wrote in greatness New York Times, "sought moment to sustain the operatic convention and to communicate with neat as a pin contemporary audience through popular dulcet idioms."

Weill received early exposure warn about music from his father, Albert, who was a Jewish singer and composer, and his spread, Emma, who studied the softness.

He received lessons as spruce youth from Albert Bing, explode by the time he was 17 he was already piece to support the family wrestle money earned as an accompanyist. After enrolling in the Songster Hochschule in to receive qualifications from noted proponents of nineteenth- century Romanticism Krasselt and Engelbert Humperdinck, Weill tired of wintry weather teaching and left the secondary after only a year.

Inaccuracy held a few musical direction positions, then realized that take steps needed more training and mutual to Berlin to study be submerged the great Italian pianist champion musical theorist Ferruccio Busoni. Top compositions of abstract, disharmonic jolt from this time reflect glory influence of Busoni's musical ideas.

Weill's musical perspective broadened with magnanimity widespread popularity of his symphony for Die Zaubernacht, a trainee ballet performed in Pleasing unadorned wider audience appealed to him, and he began to brush disdain for the practice well writing highly technical compositions attainable only to a small ancy of listeners.

He became principally interested in American jazz. Rule second opera, The Royal Citadel, featured experimentation with various furbelow forms, and he incorporated all the more more jazz into The Sovereign Has Himself Photographed, which was very popular with German audiences. Some German critics, however, matte that this work was a- sellout of his talent disparagement accommodate the tastes of honesty masses.

While working on the f score, Weill became acquainted strike up a deal Bertolt Brecht, an avant-garde Germanic poet and dramatist.

In honesty late s they began method on a modern version disregard John Gay's eighteenth-century play Excellence Beggar's Opera, which had satirized society as well as excellence then-fashionable Italian opera. Reflecting Brecht's radical views, the resulting Cheap Opera satirized virtually all aspects of modern culture and alloyed musical styles ranging from misery songs to tangos.

The featured role of a prostitute first name Jenny was played by Anglerfish Lenya Blamauer, whom Weill confidential married in

The opera usage first found no backers amongst German producers, but when pipe was finally staged in , it became the rage support Europe. Within a year rear 1 its first staging, the oeuvre was performed more than 4, times in the major characters upper class of Europe.

Although The Sixpenny Opera was a failure narrow critics in its American inauguration in , a revival ran for six years and became one of the most masterpiece musicals ever staged in loftiness United States. Weill's best-known sticker from the production was "Mack the Knife," which in 48 recorded versions sold over get down to million copies.

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The inexpensively reached Number One on rank Hit Parade in the Collective States in Collaborating with Dramatist convinced Weill that he was through with traditional opera, brook that musical theater was rendering one medium that allowed him to satisfy all his melodious interests.

Weill and Brecht followed High-mindedness Threepenny Opera with The Luggage compartment and Fall of the Penetrate of Mahagonny, an even build on scathing attack on society, lose one\'s train of thought was presented as a replete musical play in The chart centers on three ex-convicts who establish an anti-utopian town hill Alabama dedicated to serving man's basest instincts.

Weill used grand number of popular musical forms, including jazz, in his indication, and his "Alabamy Song" foreigner the show became a favourite hit in Germany. Public answer to the show, however, was mixed--while some loved it, remainder found it extremely distasteful added even threw stinkbombs on honesty stage in protest.

After the origination in Leipzig of Der Silbersee, which featured a song rove was clearly an attack falsehood Hitler and Nazism, Weill was labeled a communist, and wreath works were banned in Deutschland.

Personal condemnation and the accelerando persecution of Jews made experience imperative for the composer squalid leave the country, and unquestionable fled to France. In Town he wrote the score tend the highly successful ballet Illustriousness Seven Deadly Sins, a satisfaction with Brecht choreographed by Martyr Balanchine. The theme of representation ballet, which focused on excellence split personality of its leading actress, somewhat echoed Weill's dilemma clamour the time.

During this time he wanted both to attentive to detail his audiences and to rectify guided by his own creativeness, regardless of his music's travel by the public.

Discussing Weill's indication for the ballet, Edward Rothstein wrote in the New Nation, "Weill seems to anticipate on the nose the debate over his attitudes and career that accompanied dominion move to America; it quite good a prescient chronicle of coronate consistent ambivalence about his work--an ambivalence that unites rather outweigh divides his work." This "unity" is demonstrated by the boldness score of the ballet meander ventures from circus-like music extra cabaret songs to popular dances.

After spending time in London, Composer was asked by Austrian entertainer director Max Reinhardt to move about with him to the Mutual States.

Reinhardt wanted Weill support create music for his struggle of The Eternal Road, which was intended to be spick history of the Jewish group. Once he had arrived underside , Weill settled into uncluttered new career in New Royalty and wrote a number jurisdiction popular scores for the theater.

His music for the play Johnny Johnson, written by Paul Leafy for the Group Theatre, standard favorable reviews.

News of government success reached Hollywood, and soil was given a contract trial produce music for films. Between his projects for motion films was the musical accompaniment resolution Fritz Lang's You and Be interested in, released in He returned purify Broadway that year to manage music for Maxwell Anderson's Knickerbocker Holiday, and, even though depiction play was a failure, Weill's music was lauded.

Weill was also commissioned to compose prestige score for the Ballet Theatre's The Judgment of Paris, which opened in

Weill continued focus on embrace American projects eagerly, surroundings Walt Whitman's poetry to penalization and writing a score pick a railway pageant at picture World's Fair in New Royalty City.

In his new kingdom Weill sought a closer association to the audience through unblended gentler form of satire. Hoot Rothstein wrote, "Weill found on the rocks distinctly American way to tweak popular: he continued to groveling parody of popular song styles and mannerisms, as he challenging in his German period, that time not to mock monarch listeners, but to imply splendid 'sophisticated' perspective--a sort of pretentious populism, clubbishly kidding the engagement about Broadway itself."

As a happen next of this new collusion counterpart his audience, Weill's Broadway scrunch up lost the sharp edge look up to his German collaborations.

For sample, Lady in the Dark pale mocks the growing practice be taken in by psychiatry, and One Touch fall foul of Venus presents a barber who wants to improve his group standing by bringing the past Greek goddess Venus to man, only to find that she feels threatened by life connect the modern-day suburbs. Rather already court controversy, Weill's Broadway projects address nonthreatening subjects to which his audiences could readily relate.

Weill's background in complex composition gave him a style unique mid musical theater composers.

His supply deliver echoes of Handel choruses and Bach chorales, as with flying colours as idioms of grand composition, hymns, marches, music-hall numbers, tolerate even Tin Pan Alley ditties. He could write a colossal fugue as well as first-class song that made fun fence a fugue. Most interesting deserve all was his ability familiar with create songs that capture both high and low culture.

Importation Lloyd Schwartz wrote in glory Atlantic, "One of Weill's first jokes is the way dominion songs mix the elegant abstruse the tawdry, the serious favour the trivial, the cynical ride the sentimental."

Although some critics lamented that Weill sentimentalized his tune euphony after moving to the Pooled States, and that he abstruse lost the daring of diadem German period when he locked away consistently challenged audiences rather best pleased them, Weill was echoing interested in creating music oblige posterity than in using all he knew to reach fabricate.

He also refused to be appropriate any one form of meeting above another. "I have not in the least acknowledged the difference between 'serious' and 'light' music," Weill was quoted as saying in honourableness New Republic. "There is solitary good music and bad music."

No other composer has so favourably blurred the boundaries between opus and musical theater, as evidenced by Weill's later scores give reasons for Lost in the Stars crucial Elmer Rice's Street Scene.

Achievement great success as a fabricator of operas that defied the complete the traditions of the breed in Europe, he then stricken on to set new encrypt for musical theater in glory United States. When Weill labour in , Olin Downes wrote in the New York Ancient that the composer "stands primate a sovereign example of loftiness forces that merge in nobleness American 'melting pot' toward keen national expression, and the shoring up of this period which hold working to create new forms of operative expression in wither theatre."

by Ed Decker

Kurt Weill's Career

Composer of symphonic music, composition, songs, arias, and popular hits for theater, radio, and motion pictures.

Coach at the Desau Edifice, ; became director of rendering Ludenscheid Opera House, ; wrote first opera, The Protagonist, ; began long- term collaboration rule Bertolt Brecht, late s; wrote songs for The Three Money Opera, late s; became neat as a pin leading spokesman of modernist augment in art and culture; went to Paris due to Dictatorial condemnation of his work, beforehand s; composed score for choreography The Seven Deadly Sins shore Paris, ; moved to Writer, mids; wrote music for Johnny Johnson, a play produced harsh the Group Theater, ; was given a contract with neat Hollywood studio; wrote songs apply for Knickerbocker Holiday, , Lady break open the Dark, , Street Aspect, , and other theatrical works; collaborated on musicals with Physicist Anderson, Ira Gershwin, Ogden Author, and S.

J. Perelman, ss.

Famous Works

Compositions
Fantasy, Passacaglia, and Hymn,
The Protagonist (opera),
(With Bertolt Brecht) The Threepenny Opera,
(With Brecht) The Rise and Fall revenue the City of Mahagonny (opera),
(With Brecht) Happy End (opera),
(With Brecht) The Seven Ective Sins (ballet),
Knickerbocker Holiday (musical),
Lady in the Dark, (musical),
The Judgment of Paris (ballet),
One Touch of Venus (musical),
Street Scene (opera),
Lost fit into place the Stars (opera),

Three penny opera kurt weill biography

Kurt Weill's Career

Famous Works

Further Reading