Kurt Weill's "Seven Deadly Sins" ("
Die sieben Todsünden") dates from 1933,
the year he left Germany for Paris, after his music had been labeled
"degenerate" by the Nazi's.
Originally, he had envisaged it as a Freudian
psychological drama and asked Jean Cocteau to write the libretto. Cocteau turned
it down, so Weill turned to his long-time collaborator Bertold Brecht. Brecht
agreed on condition that he could use it to depict the corruption of the
individual in a capitalist society. Rounding out the famous names, George
Balanchine was the choreographer for the original production.
Brecht's
story became one of the greatest satires of modern music. A young woman,
represented by the practical Anna I (originally sung by Lotte Lenya) and the
impulsive, flighty Anna II (danced by Tilly Losch) leaves her two brothers and
parents and sets out on a journey through American cities to earn money for the
family to build a house.
In each city Anna II succumbs to one of the
Seven Deadly Sins, and has to be reined in by the sensible Anna I, so that their
ultimate goal can be achieved. The massive irony is that this goal is by no
means virtuous. To make their fortune, men are seduced, robbed, blackmailed and
driven to suicide by the two Anna's.
Brecht's message is clear.
Capitalist ambition is the greatest Deadly Sin, and ultimately, in a capitalist
world, the wages of such sins is success.
"The Seven Deadly Sins" was a work written for Lotte
Lenya, Weill's wife, who was still a soprano in the 1930's. She became the
custodian and champion of Weill's music after his death in 1950, and promoted
his music till her death in 1981.
Lenya returned to Berlin in 1955 after
a 20 year absence, and was heartbroken by the devastation of the city by the
War.
She made 2 recordings, the 1956
"Sins" and in 1955 the "
Berlin Theatre Songs", a selection of songs from
Weill's earlier German works, including "
The Threepenny Opera" and "
Rise
and Fall of the City of Mahogonny".
They were a great success of
long-neglected works and led the Weill revival that continues to the present
day, greatly influencing the opera/musical styles of Leonard Bernstein and
Stephen Sondheim.
This is quintessential Weill; driving rhythms,
discordant harmonies, and his unusual orchestrations. "Sins" is scored for soprano
(Anna I), male singing quartet (the family) and a small instrmental ensemble,
which includes accordian and banjo.
But it is Lotte Lenya's voice that
sets her Weill recordings apart from all others. She first wanted to be a dancer
and never formally trained as a singer. Her style is rough, earthy, almost
amateur, emotional but never sentimental. By the 1950's, Lenya's voice was raspy
and gravelly, a legacy of countless cigarettes, and this recording had to be
transposed down by a fourth. If anything, this adds to the bittersweet but seedy
tone of the whole work. Lenya loves this music, and the music loves her. Her performance is
raw but also vulnerable and human.
Recorded on September 1-8, 1956, at Friedrich Ebert Halle, Hamburg, Germany. Originally released 1957 with Lotte Lenya (vocals), Ernst Poettgen, Sigmund Roth (bass), Fritz Göllnitz, Julius Katona (tenor) and Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg (conductor).
Lotte Lenya - Die 7 Todsünden (1957)
(192 kbps, complete cover art included)
The festival is renowned for introducing to a national audience a number of performers who went on to become major stars, most notably Joan Baez by her appearance as an unannounced guest of Bob Gibson in 1959, and Bob Dylan, in turn a guest of Baez at the 1963 festival. Not strictly limited to folk performers, in the 1960s Johnny Cash, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf all performed. The festival also included many musicians of the pre-World War II country blues who figured as influences to the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s where artists "lost" since the 1940s were "rediscovered."
In the movies made during the era of the “economic miracle” following the war, Grethe embodied the type of the Berlinwoman, known for her big heart and even bigger mouth, who was nobody’s fool and nobody’s victim. In 1968 she was given the Medal of Honour of the Federal Republic of Germany. An Inter-City Express train on the route between Frankfurt and Hanover has also been named after her, as well as a 100-Pfennig postage stamp from the permanent series “Women in German History”, which was dedicated to her in the year 2000.