Weill Without Brecht
SIMON, JOHN
On Music Weill Without Brecht By John Simon As readers of this column must by now have figured out, my aim has been to introduce classical music lovers either to insufficiently known...
...Jan Latham-König conducts the Cologne Radio Symphony and Pro Musica Choir, plus some competent soloists...
...Georg Kaiser, the leading expressionist playwright of the day, is a case in point...
...Power creates the Law, but Money creates Power...
...By 1924 the two were collaborating on a three-act ballet...
...The judge advocates passive resistance even as the commissar reopens the Orth-Mattes case, and Anna goes off to search for Luise...
...The two men are banished as well and head for the Silver Lake to drown themselves...
...they promise to serve the Great Power...
...Anna wants Mattes to leave Urb with her, but greedily he stays...
...Mattes recruits the gang of three to become scavenging soldiers who drive the starving country's remaining cattle into his barn...
...THE COMMISSAR Confiscates the disputed money and places Orth and Mattes on probation...
...Unfortunately, the most lyrical passages, involving Anna's love and search for her daughter, do not quite rise to the heights of the mother's aria in Der Jasager ("The Yeasayer," 1930) or the touching aria of Fennimore, the poor relative, in Der Silbersee ("The Silver Lake," 1933...
...Of the two German-language two-CD albums, Capriccio 60011 is fleshed out with some of the spoken dialogue, and thus more communicative...
...A bunch of conspirators arrive before him, bind and gag Angele and her crew, and take their places...
...In Act Two, the wise judge determines that Jacob Orth should marry Luise Mattes, and that the young couple should receive the money as a wedding gift...
...Der Protagonist—based on a Kaiser play—that they decided to recast as a one-act opera...
...Yet none of this should make you bypass this fine and only recording of the opera...
...Struggling to dissuade him, she puts on a phonograph record, the famous "Tango Angele," and dances with the Tsar, for whom she may also be falling...
...Mattes sends the gang of three, turned agents, to the commissar to get protection for himself from the aroused masses...
...You get only the song numbers and musical interludes, plus, in the booklet, Jonathan Eaton's far too free verse translation...
...The conniving housekeepers sing a crass fox trot about life in a fantasy land of gross luxury, and Luber manages to trick Olim, now living in fear of the wisedup Severin, to sign over his mansion and money to her...
...Orth's son, Jacob, reminds him that his life's savings are hidden in one of them...
...Fennimore is instructed by her aunt to uscramble the strange relationship between Olim and Severin...
...But news comes that the bishop, too, will attend, so the spectacle must be cleaned up...
...Six more years pass and the small chorus announces that times have changed but people have not...
...The Tsar, visiting the city, is about to come for a portrait session...
...Now she brings on her lover, and the protagonist, in an access of madness, stabs her to death...
...Weill's music is a little more conventional here and has, as it were, a conversational tone...
...She, in tum, is his only tie to reality...
...However, two further Brechtless European operas deserve attention...
...Its attack on the Great Power brought the wrath of the Nazis down on it...
...True, it does lack the "required two world-class baritones" Kim Kowalke rightly calls for in the booklet notes, and some of the non-German singers do not sound quite authentic...
...The plot does more than show the danger of confusing art with life...
...Work on Zar was interrupted by Weill's composing the Mahagonny Songspiel with a new librettist to whom Kaiser introduced Weill: Bertolt Brecht...
...A small chorus intones the Marxist motto —a refrain throughout—"People don't change...
...When the Great Power's commissar enters the city, the gang of three volunteer as his informers...
...If people are basically bad, the political satire is marginalized...
...The protagonist tends to speak an exaggeratedly literary language...
...The mansion's housekeepers are Frau von Luber, a shady former aristocrat, and her scurvy paramour, Baron Laur...
...The fetching false Angele attracts the Tsar—no tyrant but a nice young man wishing he were a private citizen—who starts flirting with her...
...The young woman also uses her musical talents to help restore Severin's health, and sings the shattering ballad of Caesar's rise and fall (an allusion to Hitler...
...Weill's music embodies this liability, most conspicuously in the two pantomimes: the first to be done "unrealistically, with exaggerated gestures...
...There is a charming quasi-love duet for her and Severin, in which they dream of journeying to the enchanted Silver Lake...
...She envisions walking on its waters, for whoever has faith and courage, she insists, will not be drowned...
...It is doubtless overlong, but its 16 musical numbers, ranging from the rousing to the ethereal, with a 24-piece orchestra and a highly inventive instrumentation providing staunch yet subtle support, make for rewarding listening...
...Still, it is as demanding vocally as it is histrionically, and presents problems for both singing actors and acting singers...
...The opera was much performed until the Nazis squelched it...
...The playing of a deliberately somewhat scratchy record is innovative, as is a chorus of gentlemen in evening clothes rather dopily commenting on the action from the orchestra pit...
...Nor is it clear whether the opera's point is, Marxianly, that change is in the conditions, or, ironically, precisely in people...
...The recording of the bastardized English-language version, Silverlake, is to be avoided...
...Nevertheless, Die Bürgschaft contains exciting musical passages throughout its somewhat excessive length...
...Despite Jacob's urging, Orth refuses to open his full granaries to the people even for ready money, and waits for higher prices...
...As Kowalke says in Kurt Weill in Europe, "Because [Weill's] score is a virtual compendium of...
...There may be too many allusions to Bach and Handel oratorios, too many baroque chorales and ariosos...
...Next, two young salesgirls in a well-stocked food store sing about the country's economic paradoxes (a sassy waltz...
...The gang of three...
...the second, "altogether dramatically, with lifelike expression...
...In contrast to the almost insidious tunefulness of the Brecht-Weill collaborations, it is largely atonal, angular, polyphonic, studded with intense chromatism, lending it a nervous, unpredictable, often disturbing quality...
...Orth standing surety for Mattes constitutes the eponymous pledge...
...Inside the camera, covered with a black cloth, is a cocked pistol aimed at the sitter...
...Luise, meanwhile, has disappeared into the city, and Anna senses that she will not return...
...The commissar proclaims the new order: industrialization and dictatorship...
...Subtitled Ein Wintermärchen ("A Winter's Tale"— with an allusion to Heinrich Heine's satire on Germany), it is billed as a "play with music" rather than an opera, since it comprises three spoken hours and only a little over one hour of music...
...He won't sit still in the chair and insists he first wants to take the photographer's picture...
...that of the second uses the pit orchestra and is vehement, sometimes grating...
...It was always thus," laments Mattes' wife, Anna, "and he'll never change...
...It will be a treat for the bishop and duke to watch me...
...to be sure, get the latter kind of music— grotesque waltz, tango, fox trot, etc.—yet the rest is more serious, an epic work written for operatic, not actorish, voices...
...Anna does not know about the hoard of money and wonders why her husband is negotiating to buy additional land...
...He tries to convince himself that the money was not rightfully Orth's and won't be missed...
...Freed, the less alluring real Angele harmlessly detonates the pistol and begins to take a real picture...
...circumstances change their behavior...
...Not knowing much about his benefactor, Severin vows revenge against his shooter in a tremendous anthem of vengeance...
...Der Protagonist's music is in some ways reminiscent of Busoni's for his oneact Arlecchino, although, as the critic Oskar Bie noted, "this is the pupil stepping beyond the master...
...One is Die Bürgschaft ("The Pledge," 1931) with a libretto by Caspar Neher, Brecht's highly gifted set designer...
...It also conveys the instability of comedy, apt to switch to drama at the drop of a word— like the sister's confession...
...if basically good, the play should have more than three sympathetic characters...
...They fight, and Orth delivers Mattes to the murderous populace...
...Severin is shot in the leg, caught and confined in the police hospital, where he fantasizes about pineapples...
...Lotte Lenja (later Lenya), was an au pair, and first met Weill...
...The non-Brechtian Weill output is no less fine and important than the catchier Brechtian one...
...On Music Weill Without Brecht By John Simon As readers of this column must by now have figured out, my aim has been to introduce classical music lovers either to insufficiently known modern composers or to the deserving less popular works of better known ones...
...Surprised by the Policeman Olim, the gang scatters...
...Orth assures him that upon discovering the money Mattes will return it...
...Earlier, the sister confessed to her seemingly incredulous brother that she was having an affair with a young lord...
...and at three and a half hours it may be too long...
...It is well sung and recorded on Capriccio 60007, with the Cologne Radio Orchestra and some sprightly singers under Jan Latham-König's baton, although the English translation provided takes too many liberties...
...On his way home, though, Mattes is set upon by highwaymen (the gang of three) who, finding no money on him, let him go...
...But it represents a transition from the throughcomposed operas with Kaiser to the number opera, though not in the popular Brecht-Weill manner...
...On the other hand, Lionel Salter's prose rendering for Capriccio loses just as much through mistranslation...
...Eschewing melody, Weill conjures up a veritable Kirchnerian expressionist painting with a rhythmically and harmonically unsettling progression...
...Trudging through a snowstorm, they are being tested (so sings the offstage chorus), and the snow stops as they reach the frozen lake...
...Armed with an introduction from the conductor Fritz Busch, the young composer approached Kaiser and found that he had enjoyed seeing Weill's pantomime Zaubernacht ("Magic Night...
...Act One, six years later, begins with Mattes' annual crossing of the river to Orth's to buy feed for his cattle...
...But this emotional no man's land is traversed by flashes of humor and portents of tragedy...
...Anna is dying, but Jacob, who has found Luise, now a prostitute, cannot persuade her, even with a letter from Anna, to return home...
...Mattes declares himself too busy to attend his dying wife...
...The sun comes out, the trees become verdant, and the men hear the voice of Fennimore: "The Silver Lake supports him who must go on...
...The tale begins with Severin and four otheryouths symbolically digging a grave for hunger, the winter tyranny of their country...
...The grain merchant Orth, his supplier, rescues him from his ferocious creditors, played by a gang of three who will recur in different guises...
...She assumes that Olim and Severin will off each other, but Fennimore has reconciled them, and is chased out for having done so...
...Olim tears up the report, resigns from the force, buys a rural mansion, and moves in with Severin, who is still in a wheelchair...
...This is strong stuff...
...its bleak view of human nature made opera houses, then as today, leery...
...Olim starts nursing him back to health as well as cosseting him...
...Loosely based on a 1774 parable by Johan Gottfried von Herder, the opera takes place in the fictional Urb, where the cattle merchant Mattes incurs severe gambling debts...
...So ends the Prologue...
...The granary is empty, pending the arrival of some ships, but Orth cannot refuse to sell Mattes the last two sacks of near-worthless chaff concealed in a corner...
...Weill had a sophisticated taste in librettists that he dared indulge because he was a favorite pupil of Ferruccio Busoni, and because of several impressive nonoperatic works he had already created...
...the poor, poorer...
...On BMG 63447, Markus Stenz leads the London Sinfonietta and some slightly superior soloists, although ?. ?. Gruber is an unpleasantly affected Olim, and Graham Clark hams up the lottery agent...
...Cargo ships appear on the river, and Orth fears he won't be able to pay them...
...As Rainer Pöllmann observes in the booklet of the persuasive CD (Capriccio 60086, with John Mauceri conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester and a capable cast), "For all its passion and agitation, the music...
...They strike out across the ice toward the unknown...
...And the two-CD recording (EMI 56976) has many virtues, including Julius Rudel's masterly conducting of the Spoleto Festival U. S. A. Orchestra, some able soloists and the excellent Westminster Chorus...
...I am a trifle disturbed by the sentimental mysticism of the concluding pages, but the music does not stoop to schmaltz...
...his inimitable musical style and also the most explicit statement of his concern for a human social order, [Silbersee] may be the single work most representative of Weill's German career...
...The small chorus reiterates its refrain...
...Through the night, as Olim tries to write a police report about the robbery, he is tortured by his conscience (sung by the offstage chorus) and decides to do right by at least one hungry man...
...We are in Act Three, and while Mattes and Orth grow rich, the people of Urb undergo four scourges: war, inflation, hunger, and disease...
...The gang raids the store and Severin, of all the food he might have taken, steals only a pineapple, symbol of the finer things of life...
...The second project, delayed till 1925, resumed at Kaiser's suburban home, where a struggling young actress...
...He requests to remain unprosecuted long enough to play his greatest role, "which no longer permits distinguishing between real and make-believe craziness...
...Fennimore stands for the gentler side of humankind that points it in the true direction...
...The symbolism is mamfest: Radicals (Severin) and conservatives (Olim) must make common cause if evil incumbents force them into exile...
...There followed another collaboration with Kaiser, the one-act commission from the famous Baden-Baden Festival, Der Zar lässt sich photographieren ("The Tsar Has His Picture Taken," 1927...
...Save for the tango, the score is not especially melodious, but keeps pace with the deadly game of musical chairs...
...Abandoned by the commissar and fleeing the people's ire, Mattes seeks Orth's protection, but the grain merchant is no longer willing to vouch for him...
...A sleazy lottery agent announces that Olim has won the jackpot, and slimily tells him how to invest for even greater riches (an impudent tango...
...He tells his dying friend that "Everything occurs according to one law only: the Law of Money, the Law of Power...
...Word comes that the police are on their way to arrest the would-be assassins, who flee across the rooftops...
...Annoyed, the protagonist makes the troupe rehearse the same story with a tragic twist, involving a jealous husband's murderous rage...
...It deserves to be equally known and enjoyed...
...The last of Weill's European works, again with a libretto by Kaiser, is Der Silbersee...
...When Fennimore, Luber's niece, arrives, she sings a moving song of the poor relative shunted from pillar to post...
...Salter does similar disservice to the EMI Bürgschaft...
...The rich have grown richer...
...This time around my focus is on the early European operatic works of Kurt Weill (190050)—other than the collaborations with Bertolt Brecht—that are available on CD...
...When Mattes does not show up the next morning, Orth recalls his best client's words, "Give little, keep lots— that's the way to get rich...
...But the Great Power (read the Nazis) has invaded Urb, prompting the judge to predict that a new law of money will soon obtain...
...Rather than seducing and lulling, it ambushes and gets under the skin...
...keeps an emotional distance," in contradistinction to, say, Hindemith's expressionist one-act operas...
...Set in Elizabethan England, the story tells of a leading actor who travels with some strolling players and his sister, whom he incestuously loves and jealously guards from outside experiences...
...The troupe is rehearsing at an inn—for an evening's performance at the ducal palace—a comically bawdy pantomime, wordless because there will be foreign guests in the audience...
...Kaiser's dialogue is correspondingly dualistic...
...We are in 1914 Paris, where Madame Angele runs a photographic studio...
...Anna and her daughter, Luise, worry about Mattes' turning greedy, and Luise confesses her urge to live in the big city...
...the others, notably the young lovers, express themselves with a simplicity bordering on the inarticulate...
...As he is about to consummate the deal, he is surprised by the gang of three, now a bunch of blackmailers threatening to denounce him to the grain merchant...
...He beats them across the river to Orth, who himself now doubts his right to the money, and they decide to seek out the verdict of the wise judge in the city...
...Accordingly, the first pantomime's music, played by an eight-piece onstage band, is jocular...
Vol. 85 • July 2002 • No. 4
