In Search of Youkali is a sort of journey through the theatre music of Kurt Weill performed by soprano Mary Bray supported by Murray Grainger (accordion), Marianne Schofield (double-bass) and William Vann (piano). For me, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The German songs; “Barbarasong” and “Berlin im Licht” are quite nicely done but with (mainly) a bright, operatic kind of sound where I would prefer something more cabaret style. The accompaniments work well though.
Saturday night Confluence presented a concert curated by Patricia O’Callaghan of a selection of works by Kurt Weill. Now I have.a bit of a love/hate relationship with Weill which will likely colour this review. Broadly speaking I love his earlier work, especially the collaborations with Brecht, but I’m just not into the Broadway stuff at all with a few exceptions such as Street Scene which has at least a bit of an edge. I also thoroughly dislike some of the American translations of the Brecht pieces that do all they can to take the edge off. Continue reading
Unbridled Theatre Collective, a new outfit, opened a run of Brecht/Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at Video Cabaret on Thursday evening. It’s in an updated version created for The National Theatre by Simon Stephens in 2016 and it’s so updated it might well be retitled The 1.25p Opera. It’s raunchy and contains sexually explicit language and action (including some rather disturbing sexual violence) that would never have made it past the censors back in the day.
This year’s art song mentors for Toronto Summer Music; Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton, gave the traditional recital in Walter Hall on Tuesday evening. Those who braved flooded streets and spotty TTC service enjoyed a treat. It was a carefully curated and beautifully performed collection of songs.
Thursday’s concert by members of the Ensemble Studio in the RBA was an all French affair (at least as far as language went) and it was rather good. Karoline Podolak iniated proceedings with Mattia Senesi at the piano with Kurt Weill’s “Youkali”. Now I’ve heard this sung by everybody from Barbara Hannigan to Benjamin Appl and I’d have to see that Ms. Podolak is right up there. There was no male stripper though.
Korin Thomas-Smith has something of a penchant for the bizarre and I think that’s a fair description of two sets drawn from Apollinaire’s Bestiaire. There were five of the Poulenc settings (about as far from Dialogues of the Carmelites as one could imagine) and six from Rachel Laurin’s more atonal and abrasive settings. I would probably sing these songs if I had four dromedaries and could sing. Fine work from Brian Cho at the piano. Continue reading
After discovering a rare Viktor Ullmann video, the Shoah Songbook concert and seeing Ute Lemper live I decided to go off and have a look for more music from Weimar, the Holocaust and resistance to Nazis; past and present. It was an interesting haul and included a 2018 album from English cabaret singer/comedienne Melinda Hughes.
Her 2018 album Weimar and Back consists of the songs from her one woman show Margo Half Woman Half Beast about the cabaret singer Margo Lion. It’s a mix of Weimar cabaret material by the likes of Mischa Spoliansky, Friedrich Hollaender, Kurt Weill and Werner Heymann that anyone familiar with the genre likely knows. There’s Das lila Lied and Chuck All the Men out of the Reichstag and Youkali and Der Mensch muss ein Heimat haben but there’s also more modern material; mostly by Hughes and collaborator Jeremy Limb. Continue reading
Dance to the Abyss is a show of music from the Weimar Republic currently on stage at Harbourfront Centre Theatre. It’s given by Art of Time Ensemble as part of their 25th and final season.
It’s an interesting mix of instrumental and vocal music. The first piece in the programme is Erwin Schulhoff’s Hot Sonate for Sax and Piano which is a four movement, heavily jazz piece influenced, expertly played by Andrew Burashko and Wallace Halladay (I think). It’s followed by three pieces by the prolific Mischa Spoliansky. There’s the atmospheric instrumental piece Sehnsucht and two songs sung by Patricia O’Callaghan in English translation; I Am a Vamp and L’heure Bleue. The songs are pretty well known and fun and I liked O’Callaghan’s playful treatment of them. Continue reading
This one has been on the bucket list for ages. I have loved Ute Lemper’s work since I discovered it back in the 1980s but had never had a chance to see her live. Last night she played Massey Hall which was. a big enough deal for me to miss an opening at the COC of one of my favourite operas. (Fear not, I’m going to Cunning Little Vixen tomorrow).
I’m guessing that most people are at least somewhat familiar with Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper which exists in several English translations including, sadly, the most commonly encountered one; the heavily bowdlerised version used on Broadway, which is source of the awful version of “Mac the Knife” inflicted on an unsuspecting world by sundry crooners. There’s now a very interesting French version which has been recorded for CD
One of the strangest records of Kurt Weill’s music that I have ever listened to has just come my way. There are two pieces involved; Propheten and Four Walt Whitman Songs. Propheten has its roots in Weill’s six hour long, Old Testament inspired, opera The Eternal Road which premiered at the Manhattan Opera House in 1937 with a cast of 245 and which ran for 153 performances before, perhaps unsurprisingly, disappearing for a long,long time. Propheten is a 1998 adaptation of the last act by David Drew using the original German text by Franz Werfel plus biblical quotations and additional orchestration by Noam Sheriff. It basically deals with the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and comes in at a more digestible 45 minutes.
operaramblings 