Some Threepenny Discs---Part One
But the Threepenny Opera lyrics to Kurt Weill's music are pure Brecht, and the resulting score was acclaimed from the moment the work premiered in 1928 in Berlin. One song, the "Moritat," which later went on to become the pop hit "Mack the Knife," is probably one of the best-known numbers from any musical.
Some of the songs illuminate the characters and advance the action. But others offer comment on the action, a device that would influence such later musicals as Company, Cabaret, and Chicago. Accompanied by a seven-piece band, the original Threepenny was performed by singing actors rather than by outstanding vocalists.
Because the book, while set in Victorian England, was conceived as a scathing satire on German society in the 1920s, it can leave contemporary audiences at a distance. So it is really the score that has kept Threepenny alive on world stages. And it's one of the theatre's greatest, most unique scores.
In this two-part piece, I'm looking at just a few of the many recordings of The Threepenny Opera, which Roundabout Theatre Company is reviving on Broadway beginning Friday. Two of Threepenny's musical numbers become an issue in any discussion of Threepenny recordings. In the original production, the songs "Pirate Jenny" and "Barbara Song" were performed by the character of Polly Peachum, the first song done in the wedding scene, the second to and at the Peachums, her parents. But in the first film version in 1931, Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya, who had created the role of Jenny on stage, repeated Jenny but took the song "Pirate Jenny" for herself. And in the celebrated '50s off-Broadway production, Lenya, again as Jenny, retained "Pirate Jenny," while "Barbara Song" was given to Lucy Brown, played by Bea Arthur. The custom of having Jenny sing "Pirate Jenny" has been maintained in many subsequent productions.
The best place to start looking at recordings of The Threepenny Opera may be with Pearl's CD release Kurt Weill: From Berlin to Broadway, a two-disc set which includes all the early recordings made of the score, in the original German. First we get two 1928 tracks made by the original Macheath, Harald Paulsen, a baritone in what's sometimes a tenor role, who sings with a legitimate, operetta-ready voice. Next are the two sides of a 78 featuring a medley performed by Arthur Schroeder, Kurt Gerron the original Tiger Brown, and Carola Neher. The role of Polly was created for Neher, although she didn't play it on opening night; she subsequently got to do it in the first film version.
In the longest section here twenty-five minutes, we get the 1930 recordings made by original cast members Lenya, Gerron, Erika Helme, Willi Trenk-Trebitsch, and Erich Ponto. They were apparently recorded with the notion of promoting the forthcoming film version. What's tricky about these tracks is that the performers don't stick to one role, but instead sing songs of more than one character. Lenya, who created the role of Jenny but later switched to Lucy in Berlin, here mostly sings Polly, although she shifts over to Jenny for one number.
What's immediately apparent is the frequent use of talk-singing or talking on pitch. While Rex Harrison's vocals in My Fair Lady are often said to have introduced this device, these recordings clearly indicate that it was already in use as far back as the original Threepenny. It's especially interesting to hear Lenya, twenty-five years before the off-Broadway production and her complete German-language recording. Her voice is sweeter, smoother, and more high-placed, almost a soprano, but with an unmistakable edge and distinction. Needless to say, there's no one quite like Lenya in this music, and here she gets to end with the Streetsinger's "Moritat." These 1928-1930 recordings are invaluable as a record of the vocal style of the original production.
The 1989 studio-cast CD of The Threepenny Opera, released in the U.S. on London Records, is probably the most complete contemporary, single-disc Threepenny in the original German. It's also one of the starriest versions. Of the four leads, two --Rene Kollo Macheath and Helga Dernesch Mrs. Peachum-- were major opera singers, both celebrated for Wagner roles. Two others --Ute Lemper Polly and Milva Jenny-- are potent popular singers specializing in the Brecht-Weill oeuvre.
While some of the music has been transposed down for Milva and Lemper, this recording opts for strong singing over the talk-singing style sometimes employed in this music. The recording follows the original 1928 version, rather than the 1931 revision that has become the basis for most revivals. There's no reprise of "Mack the Knife" in the finale, a practice that seems to have begun with the first film version. And there is brief narration and dialogue between numbers.
Conducted by John Mauceri, the recording includes the usually omitted second-act aria for Lucy, which is actually a parody of an operatic aria. It was performed by Kim Criswell in the '89 Broadway revival, but was not heard in the two previous New York productions. It was left by Weill with only piano accompaniment, so Mauceri has supplied an orchestration for it here. It's too bad that the Lucy, Susanne Tremper, doesn't do the number full justice. And perhaps to placate Italian pop diva Milva, the recording features two full renditions of "Pirate Jenny," one given, as it originally was, to Polly Lemper, the other sung by Milva's Jenny.
It's fun to hear Kollo and Dernesch supplying full-blown operatic tones in their roles. Kollo is an unusually handsome-sounding Macheath, especially in "Ballad of Immoral Earnings." With Kollo and Dernesch holding forth, the second-act finale may never have been sung quite like this before.
Lemper sounds rather different from the Lemper of today. Some of the music lies too high for her, but she was still young enough at the time of this recording to fake the highest notes and get away with it. Her renditions of "Pirate Jenny" and "Barbara Song" are striking. A good contrast to the other singers, Milva is a deep, husky-voiced Jenny, her "Pirate Jenny" harsher and more dramatic.
The New York premiere production of Threepenny, at Broadway's Empire Theatre in 1933, was a dismal failure, lasting all of twelve performances. It seems Depression-era audiences were having none of the work's piquant dissonances and satire of bourgeois society. But it was only natural that, following Weill's death in 1950, the work would be given a second chance in New York. The early '50s saw the off-Broadway movement come into its own, so it was an inspired notion to give Threepenny its New York return at an off-Broadway house.
In 1954, a new production, directed by Carmen Capalbo, opened at the Theatre de Lys now the Lucille Lortel in the West Village. It featured a new translation, actually an adaptation, by Marc Blitzstein. Because Blitzstein was a gifted theatre composer-lyricist in his own right, the result, while less than scrupulously authentic, was theatrically sound and made the work accessible to contemporary audiences. The recently widowed Lenya recreated her original role of Jenny and managed the feat of winning a Tony with an off-Broadway performance.
The production closed after ninety-five performances, but reopened the following year to play a record-breaking 2,611 performances. The production re-established Weill's reputation in the U.S. and was a landmark in the development of off-Broadway. And for many, the MGM cast album of the off-Broadway Threepenny, reissued by Decca Broadway in 2000, will remain the outstanding recording of the score, certainly the most celebrated and popular recording in English.
Blitzstein's lyrics have been accused of softening Brecht's text, but it should be noted that Blitzstein was, in the midst of the recording sessions, obliged to replace lyrics that were considered overly explicit with milder ones that he had to think up on the spot.
The singers on this recording are glorious. Lenya is, of course, incomparable as Jenny. Then there's Jo Sullivan's full-bodied Polly; Bea Arthur's sardonic Lucy; and Charlotte Rae's incisive Mrs. Peachum. The leading man is Scott Merrill, who, prior to this production, had mostly been a dancer in musicals. His singing voice is quite fine, and it's somewhat surprising that, unlike his colleagues, the success of Threepenny didn't lead to other major roles.
Sullivan's Polly loses two songs: Needless to say, Lenya takes "Pirate Jenny," and no one would want it any other way. And Arthur takes "Barbara Song" and does wonders with it. To replace "Pirate Jenny" in the wedding scene, Sullivan's Polly sang "The Bilbao Song" retitled "The Bide-a-Wee in Soho", written for another Brecht-Weill musical, Happy End. But it was understandable that the "Bide-a-Wee" number was left off the cast recording, as it was not a part of the Threepenny score.
When I was about six years old, I heard my father playing this Threepenny cast album; it sounded harsh and unpleasant, and I kept my distance from it. But just a few years later, I fell in love with the recording, and luckily got taken to see the de Lys production during its final year. Gerald Price, the production's original Streetsinger, was now playing Macheath. Now, of course, the recording ranks as a classic performance of a classic work, one of the essential discs of its era.