On March 2, 1900, Kurt Weill was born.
photos by Styrous®
His wife, Lotte Lenya
is usually the "spokesperson" for his music; she had decades of
experience working with Weill and her interpretations are considered the
last word.
Austrian-born American singer and actress, Martha Schlamme spent her career singing the works of Weill as well as cabaret music of other composers of his period.
Martha Schlamme ~ The World Of Kurt Weill In Song
vinyl LP front cover
cover photo by Lee Friedlander
photo of album cover by Styrous®
vinyl LP front cover
cover photo by Lee Friedlander
photo of album cover by Styrous®
From the 1960's through 1984, Miss Schlamme performed frequently with
Alvin Epstein in A Kurt Weill Cabaret. She was also known for her
repertory of folk songs in 12 languages.
She was born Martha Haftel in Vienna. She studied classical singing in Austria and France. After her Jewish family fled to Britain in 1938, she began performing in an internment camp on the Isle of Man. Engel Lund, an Icelandic singer, introduced her to the international repertory, and after World War II she began performing folk songs and Yiddish songs in London.
She married Hans Schlamme in the
mid-1940's - a marriage that ended in divorce - and immigrated to the
United States in 1948. She quickly established a national reputation
with a program called Songs of Many Lands.
Martha Schlamme ~ The World Of Kurt Weill In Song
vinyl LP back cover
photo by Styrous®
In 1963, Miss Schlamme and the singer Will Holt started a long Off-Broadway run in The World of Kurt Weill. It was the first of many Weill performances. They included the role of
Jenny in Weill and Die Dreigroschenoper (The
Threepenny Opera) by Bertolt Brecht at the City Center and the first North American
performances of the Brecht-Weill Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Stratford, Ontario,
Festival in 1965; A Kurt Weill Cabaret with Mr. Epstein, which
opened in Chicago in 1966 and was revived intermittently through 1984,
and Whores, Wars and Tin Pan Alley with Mr. Epstein in 1969.
Miss Schlamme also acted in non-Weill plays and musicals. She made her
Broadway debut in 1968 as Golde in Fiddler on the Roof, and also
appeared on Broadway in the Robert Anderson play Solitaire, Double
Solitaire. She performed in the 1968 Off-Broadway production Month
of Sundays, and the Long Wharf Theater 1970 production of Country People, by Maxim Gorky, and its 1971 production of Gorky's Yegor
Bulichov. She also created a number of one-woman shows, including A
Woman Without a Man Is... and The Jewish Woman.
Martha Schlamme ~ The World Of Kurt Weill In Song
photo by Styrous®
Martha Schlamme died on Sunday, October 6, 1985, in Jamestown, N.Y., two months after suffering a stroke on stage. She was 60 years old and lived in Manhattan.
Kurt Julian Weill was born on March 2, 1900, in the Jewish quarter in Dessau in Saxony, where his father was a cantor. In February 1924 the conductor Fritz Busch introduced him to the dramatist Georg Kaiser, with whom Weill would have a long-lasting creative partnership resulting in several one-act operas. At Kaiser's house in Grünheide, Weill first met singer/actress Lotte Lenya in the summer of 1924.
The couple were married twice: in 1926 and again in 1937 (following
their divorce in 1933). She took great care to support Weill's work, and
after his death she took it upon herself to increase awareness of his
music, forming the Kurt Weill Foundation.
Weill fled Nazi Germany
in March 1933. A prominent and popular Jewish composer, Weill was
officially denounced for his populist views and sympathies, and became a
target of the Nazi authorities, who criticized and interfered with
performances of his later stage works, such as Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, 1930), Die Bürgschaft (1932), and Der Silbersee
(1933). With no option but to leave Germany, he went first to Paris,
where he worked once more with Brecht (after a project with Jean Cocteau failed) on the ballet The Seven Deadly Sins.
On April 13, 1933 his musical The Threepenny Opera was given its premiere on Broadway, but closed after 13 performances to mixed reviews.
Weill and Lenya moved to New York City on September 10, 1935; they rented an old house with Paul Green during the summer of 1936 near Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut, the summer home of the Group Theatre, while finishing Johnny Johnson. Some of the other artists who summered there in 1936 were; Elia Kazan, Harry Morgan, John Garfield, Lee J. Cobb, Will Geer, Clifford Odets, Howard Da Silva and Irwin Shaw.
Rather than continue to write in the same style that had characterized
his European compositions, Weill made a study of American popular and
stage music.
Weill suffered a heart attack shortly after his 50th birthday and died on April 3, 1950, in New York City. He was buried in Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. The text and music on his gravestone come from the song A Bird of Passage from his play, Lost in the Stars.
Martha Schlamme ~ The World Of Kurt Weill In Song
vinyl LP labels
photos by Styrous®
Side 1:
A1 - Bilbao Song
A2 - J'Attends Un Navire
A3 - Lonely House
A4 - Susan's Dream
A5 - Mack The Knife
A6 - Thousands Of Miles
Side 2:
B1 - Surabaya Johnny
B2 - My Ship
B3 - Barbara's Song
B4 - Le Roi D'Aquitaine
B5 - Lost In The Stars
B6 - Alabama Song
Credits:
Arranged By – Abraham Stokman, Will Holt, Samuel Matlovsky
Composed By – Kurt Weill
Directed By – Abraham Stokman, Will Holt
Photography By [Cover] – Lee Friedlander
Producer [Album produced by] – Danny Davis (4)
Producer [Produced By] – Tanya Chasman, E. Albert Gilbert*
Recorded By [Recording Engineer] – Phil Ramone
Recording Supervisor [Director of Engineering] – Val Valentin
Screenwriter – Will Holt
Sleeve Notes [Album Notes] – Will Holt
Voice Actor – Martha Schlamme, Will Holt
Notes:
An MGM Original Cast Recording
Album Notes in English by Will Holt
Barcode and Other Identifiers
Matrix / Runout (Runout side A): E-4180 SIDE-I 63-MG-634 F.G.
Matrix / Runout (Runout side B): E-4180 SIDE-2 63-MG-635 F.G.
Martha Schlamme – The World Of Kurt Weill In Song
Label: MGM Records – SE4052P
Format: Vinyl, LP, Stereo
Country: US
Released:
Genre: Pop, Folk, World, & Country
Style: Cabaret
Viewfinder links:
Lotte Lenya
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill song lyrics
Net link:
NY Times ~ Martha Schlamme, Singer, 60 obit
YouTube links:
Bilbao Song
Lost In The Stars
Mack The Knife
Surabaya Johnny
Tango Ballade
Lotte Lenya
Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill song lyrics
Net link:
NY Times ~ Martha Schlamme, Singer, 60 obit
YouTube links:
Bilbao Song
Lost In The Stars
Mack The Knife
Surabaya Johnny
Tango Ballade
Styrous® ~ Monday, March 2, 2020
