vinyl LP front cover detail
painting by Tom Allen
detail photo of album cover by Styrous®
Today, Monday, October 18, is the birthday of Lotte Lenya who was born in 1898. She was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse and actress, based in the United States.
In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best
remembered for her performances of the songs of her first husband, Kurt Weill.
Lenya's voice is not what one would call pretty, it is dark, grating,
raspy, almost out of tune. When you listen to her singing you can
almost smell stale cigarette smoke and taste late nights of drinking whiskey
in shabby bars and feel tales of lost loves; it is a voice that comes from the
real world perhaps even the slums. It is beautiful in its
own gravely way!
In 1957 Lenya recorded one of the theater works by her husband, The Seven Deadly Sins (German: Die sieben Todsünden, French: Les sept péchés capitaux). It is a satirical ballet chanté ("sung ballet") in seven scenes (nine movements, including a Prologue and Epilogue) composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht in 1933 under a commission from Boris Kochno and Edward James. It was translated into English by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman and more recently by Michael Feingold. It was the last major collaboration between Weill and Brecht.
This
album is one of my purchases because of the cover, as stated in
previous articles, I did that a lot. I had only known of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) by Kurt Weill and had fallen in love with it but this was completely unknown to me.
I got it home and listened to it, heard how beautiful the music is, especially the Prolog, and I was a Kurt Weill
devotee from that very day and went on to buy every album I could find
by him. And through this album and Threepenny discovered the amazing treasures of his collaborator Bertolt Brecht as well as his wife, Lotte Lenya.
photographer unknown
The Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of two sisters, Anna I and
Anna II. Anna I, the singer, is the principal vocal role. Anna II, the
dancer, is heard only infrequently and the text hints at the possibility
that the two Annas are the same person:
"She's the one with the looks. I'm realistic. She's just a little mad, my head is on straight. But we're really one divided being, even though you see two of us. And both of us are Anna. Together we've but a single past, a single future, one heart and one savings account and we only do what suits each other best. Right Anna?"
"The Family", a male quartet, fills the role of a Greek chorus.
They refer to Anna as a single daughter of the family, making a verbal
allusion to her divided nature: "Will our Anna pull herself together?"
The sisters set out from the banks of the Mississippi River in Louisiana
to find their fortune in the big cities, intending to send their family
enough money to build a little house on the river. After the prologue, in which Anna I introduces the sisters and their plans, each of seven scenes is devoted to one of the seven deadly sins, each encountered in a different American city:
- Prologue
- Faulheit / Sloth (city unnamed)
- Stolz / Pride (Memphis)
- Zorn / Wrath (Los Angeles)
- Völlerei / Gluttony (Philadelphia)
- Unzucht / Lust (Boston)
- Habsucht / Greed (Tennessee, in posthumous versions Baltimore)
- Neid / Envy (San Francisco)
- Epilogue (home, in the new little house)
vinyl LP back cover
back cover photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe
photo of album cover by Styrous®
It's really interesting to see how different groups have interpreted the work. The first link (link below) is the version "By sin" with Peter Sellars & Teresa Stratas, there is emphasis on the singing; in the second link (link below) with the Opera de Paris it is the dancing and movement that predominates. Both versions are stunning in totally different ways!!!
vinyl LP back cover details
back cover photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe
detail photos of album cover by Styrous®
vinyl LP back cover detail
back cover photo by Louise Dahl-Wolfe
detail photo of album cover by Styrous®
Tracklist:
Side 1:
Side 1:
A1 - Prolog
A2 - Faulheit
A3 - Stolz
A4 - Zorn
A2 - Faulheit
A3 - Stolz
A4 - Zorn
Side 2:
B5 - Völlerei
B6 - Unzucht
B7 - Habsucht
B8 - Neid
B9 - Epilog
Credits:
Bass Vocals – Ernst Poettgen, Sigmund Roth
Conductor – Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg
Lyrics By – Bert Brecht*
Music By – Kurt Weill
Painting – Tom Allen*
Tenor Vocals – Fritz Göllnitz, Julius Katona
Vocals – Lotte Lenya
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (Label side A): x"LP"39510
Matrix / Runout (Label side B): x"LP"39511
Matrix / Runout (Runout side A - stamped - variant 1): XLP39510-1A
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B - stamped - variant 1): XLP39511-1D
Matrix / Runout (Runout side A - stamped - variant 2): XXLP-39510-1D
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B - stamped - variant 2): XXLP-39511-1AA
Lotte Lenya – Kurt Weill's The Seven Deadly Sins
Label: Columbia Masterworks – KL 5175
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1957
Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen
Style: Modern
Label: Columbia Masterworks – KL 5175
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album
Country: US
Released: 1957
Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen
Style: Modern
Viewfinder links:
Net links:
The Telegraph ~ Partners in crime: when Bertolt Brecht met Kurt Weill
YouTube links:
Kurt Weill ~
The Seven Deadly Sins (by sin) (47 mins.)
The Seven Deadly Sins (dance) (39 mins., 36 secs.)
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