Hey, you musical theater queens! Broadway diva and two-time Tony Award winner Patti LuPone ( Photo by Ethan Hill ) is coming back to the Ravinia Festival.
This column is also for you opera queens out there, too ( or at least the ones who deign to indulge in a little classical crossover now and then ) .
As someone who admits loyalty to both opera and musical theater "queendoms," I'm really excited to see LuPone reunite with Ravinia music director and conductor James Conlon and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. After all, it was at Ravinia that LuPone tried out her first stab at Gypsy's indomitable Madame Rose ( or Mamma Rose, if you choose to call her that ) before triumphing in the part on Broadway.
This time, LuPone teams with Conlon and the CSO for a concert at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 8, focusing on German-American composer Kurt Weill.
"Kurt who?" you may ask. As a reminder, Weill is best known for teaming with playwright Bertolt Brecht in 1928 for The Threepenny Opera ( which spawned the hit tune "Mack the Knife" ) and the 1930 opera The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny ( which spawned the pop hit "Alabama Song" ) . Weill's ingenious incorporation of jazz into his music helped to put him on the Nazi blacklist. ( The fact that Weill was also Jewish also probably had something to do with his work being banned in Germany under the Nazi "Entartete Musik" or "Degenerate Music" label. )
Weill and his actress wife, Lotte Lenya, were lucky enough to get out of Europe and land in New York in 1935. Weill and Lenya eventually became naturalized American citizens and Weill went on to become an innovative Broadway composer before his untimely death in 1950.
Like Stephen Sondheim, Weill's Broadway shows tackled daring subject matter and multiple genres. Johnny Johnson ( 1936 ) was an anti-war collaboration with The Group Theatre. Street Scene ( 1947 ) was a serious attempt to integrate Broadway and opera. Love Life ( 1948 ) is one of the first important "concept musicals." Lost in the Stars ( 1949 ) dealt with race relations and apartheid in South Africa.
Unfortunately, most of Weill's U.S. works today are eclipsed by his German output. And though Weill counted many Broadway successes in his lifetime, it's his individual songs standards like "September Song," "My Ship" or "Speak Low" that most people are familiar with.
Ravinia and LuPone's all-Weill concert is a reflection of this. Instead of going all out to do a concert version of a complete Weill Broadway musical, we're getting a major German work and individual hit songs.
But I'm not protesting too much. LuPone is performing Weill's last major collaboration with Brecht, the 1933 sung-ballet The Seven Deadly Sins ( in English ) , plus singing a bevy of Weill's Broadway songs. Also on the bill is the Lady in the Dark Symphonic Nocturne, an orchestral arrangement by Robert Russell Bennett of Weill's biggest Broadway smash from 1941.
This Weill concert fits into Conlon and Ravinia's "Breaking the Silence" series, which looks at reviving works by composers who were censored or even killed by The Third Reich. Previous works presented by Ravinia include Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis and Zemlinsky's The Mermaid.
Weill might not need as much help as other lesser-known composers, especially since was able to adapt in his chosen exiled home. Weill's widow, Lotte Lenya, and her second husband, George Davis, also did much to promote his works during their lifetimes.
But Weill remains an important 20th-century composer of theater music, be it for the opera house or for the Broadway stage.
Over at L.A. Opera
Ravinia's all-Weill concert is another reunion for Conlon and LuPone. Both were involved in the Grammy Award-winning DVD of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny for Los Angeles Opera ( where Conlon is also Music Director ) .
Like Ravinia, Conlon has also championed works by Jewish or politically unpopular composers who were censored by the Third Reich in L.A. Opera's artistically bold "Recovered Voices" series. This past season, L.A. Opera's Recovered Voices featured a new staging Braunfel's The Birds ( which is eyeing a DVD release ) , while next season includes the American premiere of Schreker's orgiastic The Stigmatized.
L.A. Opera is also producing Wagner's complete Ring Cycle next season and has built a "Ring Festival L.A." running from April to June around it.
Oddly enough, this prompted a protest by Michael D. Anonovich of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Because of Wagner's well-documented anti-Semitism, Anonovich filed a motion pushing L.A. Opera to include works by other composers like Verdi or Mozart in the festival.
Luckily the other L.A. supervisors had more common sense to vote down Antonovich's protest late last month ( in part because L.A. Opera had planned symposiums critically examining Wagner's anti-Semitism ) . In all the media attention about the L.A. County government trying to meddle with L.A. Opera's programming, the Recovered Voices series was hardly mentioned.
While it's no way comparable, imagine if an Evanston city councilman demanded that Light Opera Works insert Irish jigs into a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta as reparation for historical British abuses on the Emerald Isle. Actually, I shouldn't joke about that. Light Opera Works is producing The Pirates of Penzance this holiday season.
Please send theater news and other tidbits to scottishplayscott@yahoo.com .