Who does not remember Weill's The Threepenny Opera with the Moritat von Mackie Messer (Mack the Knife) and even more magnificent the Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a critical look on modern civilization in a fictitious, prosperous town somewhere in the south of the States.
Kurt Weill, a Jew who fled from Nazi Germany to the States in 1933, had to earn his living in New York. So he composed the music for a couple of early musicals. Among them is Love Life, which he and Lerner called a vaudeville rather than a musical. On Wikipedia, I read, "Love Life opened at the 46th Street Theatre on Broadway in October 1948."
The plot is about an American couple, David and Susan Cooper, living through more than 150 years of U. S. history with the usual ups and downs in their relationship.
They are just singing in |
Why was Love Life never revived? Why was it forgotten? Is the plot too socialist? The risk of unemployment during industrialization, the fight for female suffrage, and capitalist abuse are some of the topics clad in music. The performance in Freiburg does not end here. It brings back memories of The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Casablanca, and My Fair Lady, sometimes challenging for a German audience to grasp. You meet Alice in Wonderland, Snow White, Frankenstein, Charlie Chaplin, Doris Day, Marylin Monroe, and Groucho Marx. Suddenly I found myself in the musical Gigi, listening to the famous "I Remember it Well" lyrics that Lerner later reused in a revised form in the movie Gigi of 1958.
The Freiburg performance in February 2018 received excellent reviews throughout Germany. The Theater group and orchestra surpassed themselves. Suddenly classical opera singers had to play and dance as well, and the orchestra met Weill's musical demands with a high degree of flexibility, virtuosity, and concentration.
©Theater Freiburg |
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