full text - The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music

Copyright by the Estate of David Drew.
BBC PROMS 96
Kurt Weill ( 1900-50)
The Silver Lake - A Winter's
Fairy Tale (1932)
Peter Sidhom baritone
Heinz Kruse tenor
Helga Dernesch mezzo-soprano
Juanita Lascarro soprano
Heinz Zednik tenor
Graham Clark tenor
Catrin Wyn-Davies soprano
Katarina Karneus mezzo-soprano
First Gravedigger
Paul Whelan baritone
Second Gravedigger
Gidon Saks boss-baritone
First Youth
Stephen Alder boss
Second Youth
Andrew Weale boss
Olim
Severin
Frau von Luber
Fennimore
Baron Laur
Lottery Agent
First Shopgirl
Second Shopgirl
Philip Franks
Maria Friedman
Hugh Ross
Programme note
© David Drew
n the present version of The Silver Lake, the
essence of Georg Kaiser's long and complex
play is preserved in the form of spoken
narratives (written by Jeremy Sams) and acted
monologues and dialogues from the play itself.
Together, these frame and link the performance
of the complete musical score.
An outline of the plot concludes the following
sequence of brief programme notes, each of
which is self-standing and is headed accordingly.
The order of reading is therefore a matter of
individual choice and convenience - though the
first note and last may perhaps be regarded as
basic.
I
Origins
Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake) was written and
composed in Berlin during the second half of
1932, and first performed in Leipzig (and
simultaneously in Magdeburg and Erfurt) on 18
February 1933 - nineteen days after Adolf Hitler
became Chancellor of Germany, and nine nights
before the so-called Weimar Republic and its
democratic experiment were consumed in the
flames that engulfed the German parliament
building (the Reichstag).
Der Silbersee was the last musical score by Weill
and the last play by Georg Kaiser to be heard or
staged in their native Germany until the defeat of
Hitler, and also the last to have had its world
premiere there during either of their lifetimes.
Not for another fifty-seven years could the
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theatres and opera houses of Leipzig, Erfurt and
Magdeburg freely determine their own repertories
according to th eir own needs and convictions; and
never again, perhaps, would Leipzig audiences among them , in 1933, Weill's mother and father include numerous representatives of a large,
prosperous, and culturally influential Jewish
community.
Snapshots: Germany 1929-32
Of all European countries, Germany was the
worst hit by the Wall Street crash of 1929. By
1931 Germany's unemployed numb ered over five
million; a year later, another milli on had joined
their ranks. Already in 193 1 the fli ght of capital,
coupled with the withdrawal of foreign credits,
had led to panic on the Stock Exchange and a
spate of bankruptcies. The effect on a 'welfare
state' fuelled by American capital - as freemarketeers are nowadays tending rather stridently
to point out - was crippling. Anticipating our
own times, Franz von Papen 's Centre-Right
government sharply reduced social security
benefits during the severe winter of 1931-2.
Homelessness and hunger becam e widespread. In
July 1932 -just after the N azis had doubled their
strength in the R eichstag electi ons, and just
before Weill and Kaiser began work on Der
Silbersee- a bloody battle between N azis and
Communists in the Hamburg port of Altona
was soon joined by their common enemy, the
Socialists.
M eanw hile the courageous and youthful opera
company in Altona was planning to stage Weill 's
most recent work, the three-act opera Die
Biirgschaft ('The Pledge', or 'The Surety').
Together with his friend Caspar N eher- librettist
of Die Biirgscluift and designer of D er Silbersee Weill visited Altona during the early w inter of
1932- 3. While he was there he witnessed the
plight of the homeless unemployed, and could
compare it w ith that of their Berlin comrades
who had built themselves rough huts by the banks
of the lake close to Kaiser's home in the suburb of
Griinh eide - th e lake across w hich (as legend has
it) Weill in 1924 had first rowed the still unknown
actress and dancer w ho in her final manifestation
as his loyal w idow Lotte Lenya would enliven
many a television chat-show w ith th e tale of that
crossing. By 1932 Lenya and Weill had formally
separated, and a year later they were divorced (to
remarry in 1937).
Reception
The Leipzig premiere in February 1933 was given
in the same venerable theatre and opera house
that had been Lortzing's base in the 1830s and a
major Wagn er centre in the 1870s. Ethel Smyth 's
The Wreckers had had its world premi ere there in
1906, Krenek's ] onny spielt auf twenty-one years
later, and - riotously - Weill's and Brecht's Rise
and Fall if the City if Mahagonny in 1930. The
condu ctor o f the Leipzig Silbersee - as of the
Krenek and of Mahagonny - was Gustav Brecher;
the director was D etlef Sierck (rem embered today
as the cult film director Douglas Sirk) .
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T h e premiere was reviewed n ot only by th e
Leipzi g press but also by th e leading music and
drama critics from Berlin and Frankfurt. What
H ans R oth e was later to call ' the last day of
the greatest decade of German culture in th e
twenti eth century' had seem ed to be an
unqu alifi ed success, and only th e N azi and the
M oscow-line Communist press too k excepti on
to it. N either in Leipzig nor in M agdeburgKaiser's native city - were there any hostil e
demonstrations on the first night. But in
M agdeburg on th e second night th e thugs went
to work , and w ithin hours, all three Silbersee
produ ctions were do omed. Brecher was soon to
be hounded fro m his post; and rehearsals already
in progress for a highly prestigious Berlin
premi ere at M ax R einhardt's D eutsches Theater w ith a pro minent N azi sympathiser in the role
of Olim - were abruptly terminated.
It would be misleading to suggest that
Der Silbersee was formally banned . In the
circumstances no ban was n eeded: w ithin days
of th e N azi seizure of power, a produ cti on in
Germany was in conceivable. Administrators,
condu ctors and directors who mi ght have
favou red one had either lost their positions ,
fl ed abroad , or been incarcera ted ; unl ess, of
course, they had already team ed up w ith the
new auth orities.
Subsequent performances
B eca use of th e politi cal uph eavals of th e time,
little or no news of the Silbersee premi ere reac hed
th e international or the specialist press. A voi ceand-piano score and a small album of the more
popular numbers had been published in time
for the premiere, but w ere not advertised or
promoted after M arch 1933. It was in the third
week of M arch that Weill fl ed from Berlin to
Paris - never to return .
Five years after his death , Berlin 's first
production of D er Silbersee - and th e first
anywh ere since 1933 - was given in a theatre too
small to house an orchestra. It was not until th e
1971 H olland Festival that Weill's score was h eard
again in its original form , interspersed - as today
- w ith narrations and dialogue. The British
premiere of th e complete work was m ounted by
the Camden Festival in 1987.
Georg Kaiser (1878-1945)
Kaiser is a major fi gure in the history of G erman
theatre, and one w ho had som e influ ence on the
Russian, British and American th eatre of his time
- chi efly throu gh his E xpressionist 'stationdranu ' From Morn ing to M idnight. Eclipsed as he
now is, he rem ains an essential link between th e
generation of Gerhart H auptmann and Frank
Wedekind and that of Brecht. In th e 1920s Brecht
was a fre qu ent visitor to th e Kaisers' fa mily home
on the outskirts of Berlin ; and like Weill h e was
acc ustomed to address th e playwright and his
w ife as if th ey were his foster-parents. Later and
w ith more irony he would w rite of 'the grea t
ge ntl eman Kaiser' - which was indeed one of
Kaiser's favo urite roles.
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A consciously post-C hristian didactic moralist
whose affinities with B ernard Shaw were disguised
by the studi ed artificiality of his Expressionist
diction and the modernist constru ctivism of his
dramaturgy, Kaiser won overnight fame and
notoriety towards th e end of the First World War
with his pacifist drama The Bu rghers if Calais.
Although - like the young Brecht - he was
bri efly involved in the revolutionary politics of
post-1 9 18 Bavari a, his hatred of militarism and his
profound mistrust (or misunderstanding, as th e
1990s would have it) of capitalism were tempered
by a commitment to Tolstoyan non-violence.
With little use for M arx and no ne at all for Stalin ,
Mussolini , or Hitler, Kaiser was a solitary and
reclusive fi gure lo ng before the N azis forced hjm
into 'inn er exile'. Escaping to Switzerland in
1938, he died there seven years later, all but
fo rgotten .
Genre
Like Th e Threepenn y Opera but mu ch more
demandingly, The Silver Lake presupposes a cast
o f 'sin gin g actors'. Alth ough it is likewise not an
opera in the strict sense, it is audibly th e work
of a composer w ith opera proj ects still at th e
fo refront of his mind. D espite and beca use of
rapidly diminishing opportuniti es for them in
Germany, Th e Silver Lake takes for granted th e full
resources of the sa me ri chly subsidised thea tre and
o pera system in w hi ch Richard Strauss and M ax
R einh ardt had long been luxuriating.
Th e Weill of The Silver Lake is rooted in a
traditi on of musical theatre that went back to th e
Mozart of The Magic Flute, via Weber, Albert
Lortzing and Wenzel Mi.ill er. H e was also and
equally indebted to the alternative tradition that
had fostered precarious marriages between high
drama and musical scores too extensive and
powerful to be considered incidental. There again,
M ozart was a model - th e Mozart of Thamos,
King if Egypt.
Kaiser for his part was som ething of a
Wagnerite - again , p erhaps, in Shaw 's sense - but
one w ho was by no m eans averse to the rou gh
and tumbl e of th e commercial thea tre. In capable
of w ritin g a mere po tboil er but happy to set up
a stall in th e market place from time to time, he
foll owed th e latest Berlin R evu es mu ch as he
followed his fa vourit e fo otball tea m - avidly,
coolly, m ath emati cally.
Kaiser's Silver Lake is not a play ' w ith ' music,
as Brec ht and Elisabeth H auptmann 's adaptation
of The BeMa r's Opera was intended to be before
Weill made a Threepenny Opera of it; it was
essentially a play ' for' music - so mething that
becom es vividly cl ear alm ost as soo n as th e prosa ic
and po nderous Olim breaks the sil ence he had
magisterially preserved thro ughout th e opening
scene, and alone in th e local poli ce stati on, b egins
his bureaucra ti c m on ologu e. On e of the great
passages in twentieth -century music th eatre, th e
police-stati on sce ne was o nly conceivable throu gh
a tru e partn ership of composer and playwright.
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The Music
In 1933 neither Weill, his public, nor his cri tics
needed any programme notes about the style,
langu age or 'intention s' of his Silbersee music.
Today, w hen that style and language are even
more remote from contemporary art-musics and
popular-musics than th ey once were from
Stravinsky or Spoliansky, Hindemith or H ollander,
the musical world seem s to know a lot m ore
about W eill and his intenti ons than Weill himself
could possibly have kn own at th e time.
There is, for instance, the key fact - of which
he could not have had the slightest inklin g - th at
after Der Silbersee his next work would be The
SeiJen Deadly Sins, and th at it wo uld be written in
Paris. Another unforeseeable and closely related
fact was that th e Symphony w hose first movement
he had drafted in January 1933 in Berlin - sh ortly
before th e Silbersee premieres - would not be
finished for anoth er year, and would wait nearly
forty years for its official Germ an premi ere.
And yet it is arguable that today's listeners
to th e SiliJer Lake music sho uld envy and try
to emulate th e relative inn ocence of their
predecessors sixty-three years ago. If any
foreknowledge is likely to help them, it is th e
simple observati on th at from w hatever directi on
we choose to approach it, the unity of th e music
has three compacted layers. Th e first is Weill's
highly personal transformatio n of popular so ng
and dance idioms, w h eth er o f his own day or
from as far back as Schubert's. The second layer
extends directly from the post-Verdian operatic
preoccupations of Die Bu rgschafi and its
predecessors; and the third is part of his
inh eritance, via his teacher Busoni , from th e
masonic rites of M ozart.
These may seem to b e academic matters, yet
th ey are more th an that. As we approach the end
of our century and ofWeill's too, th e 'Wheel of
Time' w hose revolutions are the subj ect of 'The
Fool's Paradise' du et in The Si/IJer Lake, is pressin g
harder and movin g faster than ever. The old
question of what has already been irretrievably
crush ed by it, and how mu ch is about to be, has
acquired a new urgency.
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SYNOPSIS
Th e word W intermarchen, m ea ning w inter's tale
(or, more strictly, fairy tale), has two di stin ct
resonances in German. Th e first is fro m
Shakespeare via Sc hlegel-Tieck's classic translation
of The W inter5 Tale, w hose German title is Das
Winterm archen; th e seco nd and m ore specifi c
is from H eine and his Deutschland - Ein
W intermdrchen .
The ac tion of The Silver Lake is set in an
unspecified time and place, w here the 'h ere- andnow' is so clearly an ann exe to th e 'once-up ona-time, anywh ere', that it would still functio n
as such even were all mem ory of the Ger man
w inter of 1932-3 to be lost. Of th e five nam ed
fi gures, th e three principals - O lim, Severin
and Fennimore - have names suggestive of a
legendary wo rld, w ith out nati onal or historical
co nn otati ons. But Frau vo n Luber and her
accompli ce th e Baron Laur are recognisable as
part of th e debris from Wilh el nu an Germany, and
like their successors to day, are proud to bear th e
titles that were o ffi cially abolish ed in 19 18.
It is w inter. Severin and hi s four co mpani ons
live in th e shacks they have built in th e woods
surrounding th e Silver Lake. Lo ng unemployed
and now destitute, they are driven by sheer
hun ger to raid a suburban grocery store. H aving
m ade their escape, they are alrea dy n earing th e
Silver Lake w h en two rural policem en, alerted by
the sound of a hu e- and-cry, try to stop th em . As
Synopsis th ey take to their heels, Co nstable O li m fires at
© David Drew th em , severely wo undin g Severin, w ho is dul y
arrested and taken to hospital.
Whil e preparin g his report o n the incident,
Olim - prompted and guided by the off-stage
choru s - begins to qu esti on his own rol e, and
the very natu re of law and order in a disordered
society. To change th e world is beyond his
capacity, but to help a fell ow human bein g is not.
O lim is interrupted in hi s ruminati ons by a
M ephistoph elian Lottery Agent bringin g news
th at he is th e jackpot w inn er and advising him to
invest th e proceeds o n th e m ost advantageo us
terms. Instead , Olim re- w rites his report in
Severi n 's favo ur, resigns fro m th e poli ce force,
and purchases a remo te castl e w hich is to b ecom e
Severin's priva te and luxurio us sa natorium. In hi s
new identi ty as castl e- owner and benefactor, Olim
visits th e still delirio us Severin in hospital, and
assum es full respo nsibili ty for his recuperation .
D uly installed in the castle, Severin is treated
like a lord , and already has a prodi gious appetite.
But th e stronger he b eco mes, th e more is he
obsessed by th e idea of tracking down the
unkn own poli ceman , and ave ngin g himself.
Severin 's behavio ur is cl osely wa tch ed by Frau
von Luber- O lim 's chatelaine and the erstw hile
owner of the castl e. Convin ced th at Olim has a
secret, she calls in her niece Fennimore, ostensibly
to ca re fo r Severin , but ac tually to discover all she
ca n about him and his benefactor. But Fennimore
is of quite another mind, and it is no fa ult of hers
that Severin eventu ally discovers O lim's tru e
identi ty. Such is Severin's rage th at th e terrifi ed
O lim takes refu ge in an atti c and th ere beco mes
easy prey to vo n Luber. H aving secured O lim 's
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signature to an unread docum ent, she believes
she ca n safely leave the actu al throat-cuttin g to
Severin.
Even when Fennim ore brings about th e
complete reconciliation of th e two m en, von
Luber remains triumphant. Thrusting Fennimore
o ut into th e howling night, sh e swiftly sil ences
O lim; for th e document he had blindly signed
co nveys the castle and all his worldly goods to
herself and Baron Laur.
Cast out like Fennimore before th em , Olim
and Severin head for th e Sil ver Lake and th e
oblivion of its waters. But th e disembodied voices
of Fe1mimo re and the ch oru s remind them of
th eir duti es to life and to each other. When at last
they reach th e woods beside the lake, a mj ghty
gust of w ind sweeps the snow from the trees,
and reveals th e green of spri ng. But th e lake is
still frozen solid . With new co nfidence, the two
men start to cross towards th e other side.