Kurt Weill: On Stage: From Berlin to Broadway

by Foster Hirsch, Foster Hirsch (Composer)

His best-known song is “Mack the Knife ” with words by Bertolt Brecht, from The Threepenny Opera , first performed in Weimar Berlin in 1928. Five years later, Kurt Weill fled the Nazis to come to America, where he soon emerged as one of the most admired composers of the Broadway musical stage. His shows Knickerbocker Holiday, Lady in the Dark, One Touch of Venus, Street Scene and Lost in the Stars . His “My Ship ” “September Song ” “Speak Low” and “It Never Was You.” This biography concentrates on Weill's career in the United States, but its aim is to explore the truth in the comment made by Weill's wife, the unforgettable Lotte “There is no American Weill, there is no German Weill. There is no difference between them. There is only Weill.”

Genres: Theatre, Biography

418 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

Reviews

[MH · Rating 4 out of 5]

A readable, thorough collection of production histories of the works of Weill's career - Hirsch stays close to the stage, and outside of the delightful, venomous letters he and Lotte Lenya exchanged he doesn't get deep into Weill's personal life or biography other than to let us know where he was living or how he met his collaborators. It's a good, smart choice, and coupled with Hirsch's skill at writing about the music with depth and intelligence (but never in a way that makes his criticism inaccessible for a layman like me) it makes the book quite enjoyable, and valuable to anyone interested in Kurt Weill's short but varied career.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

When the film of One Touch of Venus, which would be Weill's final collision with Hollywood, finally opened in October 1948, the terms of his contract were indeed honored. There were no interpolations, and all the scoring was based on themes from his score. But only three songs were used: "Speak Low," "That's Him," and, with new lyrics and a new title, "Foolish Heart." At a time when movie musicals were in their prime, Venus seems unaccountably embarrassed to break into song. The source of the film's curious and crippling resistance to Weill's score may have been its leading lady, Ava Gardner, a Universal contract player being groomed for stardom, who couldn't sing -- she was dubbed by Eileen Wilson -- or dance, or, for that matter, act. With a dull, coarse speaking voice, a plebeian slouch, and a complete absence of humor or charm, Ava Gardner made a singularly unpersuasive goddess. Her common touch completed the film's reduction of a sophisticated, ironic Broadway musical into a leaden romantic fantasy for postwar audiences.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

"This book reminded me of Neal Gabler’s Walt Disney bio in that it’s an impeccably researched, wide-ranging and sympathetic book that never really gets to the meat of what made its subject tick. Although Kurt Weill is best known for subversive German musicals like The Threepenny Opera, I actually found the part of the book on his reinvention in America much more interesting. Foster Hirsch goes through everything Weill touched with a fine toothed comb, even giving fair assessments to lost and forgotten works like the 1939 [New York] Worlds Fair production Railroads on Parade. Unfortunately I wasn’t very familiar with Weill’s oevure before reading this, and that might have stifled my enjoyment of the book. Some writers know how to illuminate unfamiliar music and make it seem as if you’re in the room listening with them (Ethan Mordden comes to mind); Foster Hirsch, skilled as he is, doesn’t have that quality. In sum: I liked it, it could’ve been better." - Scrubbles.net review, June 8, 2008.

[Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great overview of Weill's work - not so great coverage of his personal life. Also, it helps if you are already familiar with most of Weill's music before reading - sometimes the author doesn't really give the necessary background for a newbie. I absolutely loved the Appendix which described some of the major stagings Weill's work after his death. I wish all musical theater biographies had an appendix like this (a large part of our ideas about theater-folks works are based on modern stagings).