Saturday, April 25, 2020

Semi-Staged Weill-Brecht: Slatkin in Detroit

Photograph of Kurt Weill taken in 1932, not long before his departure from Germany (from the German Federal Archives, photographer unknown, from Wikimedia Commons, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Germany license)

The latest electronic mail promotion of a performance by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) given video documentation in the DSO Replay archive is a semi-staged presentation of “The Seven Deadly Sins,” classified as a “satirical ballet chanté [sung ballet],” composed by Kurt Weill setting a libretto by Bertolt Brecht. The performance took place on June 6, 2017 with Leonard Slatkin on the DSO podium. Detroit singer-songwriter Shara Nova performed the “leading role” of Anna, “backed up” by the Hudson Shad vocal quartet performing the members of Anna’s family and serving as a “Greek chorus.”

Before discussing either the performance or the video work, it is worth reviewing the background of this rather unique composition. The music was written in 1933, by which time both Brecht and Weill had the foresight to get out of Berlin before things got worse. Their collaboration on “The Seven Deadly Sins” took place in Paris. Weill received the commission in December of 1932, and Brecht left Switzerland to work with him. This would be their last major collaboration.

The commission came from Edward James, who was married to the ballerina Tilly Losch. James was the one that gave Weill and Brecht the idea that the lead characters should be performed by both a vocalist (Weill’s wife Lotte Lenya) and a dancer (Losch). In the libretto Lenya’s part was marked as “Anna I,” while a few spoken fragments were assigned to Losch as “Anna II.” As might be expected, the score was structured in seven scenes, one for each of the sins, framed by a prologue and an epilogue. The two Annas are twin sisters, living (in a “little house”) on the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana (possibly in New Orleans). They leave home in search of a better life; and each of the sins takes place in a different American city (the last of which, Envy, happens to be San Francisco).

The premiere was produced, directed, and choreographed by George Balanchine for a performance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (best known in music history as the venue for the debut of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring”). The libretto was subsequently translated into English by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. After his move to the United States, Balanchine added “The Seven Deadly Sins” to his New York City Ballet (NYCB) repertoire in 1958. Lenya sang the English version of the libretto with Allegra Kent dancing the role of Anna II.

Since that time there have been several stagings of note. These include a new version for NYCB with more dancers choreographed by Lynne Taylor-Corbett and the two Annas performed by Patti LuPone and Wendy Whelan. However, there have also been a variety of approaches to concert performances with different degrees of staging. One of those performances was given in June of 2003 by the San Francisco Symphony (SFS) conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas and vocalist Ute Lemper taking both of the Anna roles.

On that occasion Lemper was joined on the stage by Hudson Shad, and they definitely were comfortable with the sharper dissonances in Weill’s score and the ironies of Brecht’s libretto. (The part for the mother of the family is given to the bass voice.) The Detroit video thus provided me with my second opportunity to experience Hudson Shad’s approach to their role in the score, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves more with their increased acquaintance with the score. For her part in the production, Nova worked with a few sets and costume accessories. In the SFS performance I came away feeling that Lemper’s performance was too much about Lemper, so I much preferred Nova’s capacity for “playing well with others.”

Nevertheless, while the Detroit performance used the English libretto, it is important to recognize that Weill’s scoring was not as kind to the words as it had been in the Brecht partnerships that led to The Threepenny Opera and Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. This was a video document that almost cried out for subtitles, and the impact of the libretto frequently suffered from their absence. Even though Slatkin did his best to manage the right dynamic balance between the frequently raucous score for the instruments and the need for vocal clarity, too many critical lines in the libretto never registered with the necessary impact.

I also feel a need to quibble with the lack of final credits after the conclusion of the performance. When the recording involves conductor, ensemble, and soloist, i can appreciate that the video ends when the music ends. In this case, however, there was not even an effort to identify the Hudson Shad vocalists by name, which, for me at least, felt like a great injustice. Similarly, this was a case in which the video director definitely deserved credit for balancing the activities in the minimal staging with key views of what was happening in the orchestra.

That said, Slatkin clearly knew how to present Weill to a concert audience; and the impact of that presentation can be counted for more than any of my quibbles!

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