A Life Between Opera, Musical, and Political Theater 

Kurt Weill (*March 2 1900, in Dessau; † April 3 1950, in New York) was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. His music blends classical traditions with jazz, cabaret, and popular music. Collaborating with renowned librettists such as Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Georg Kaiser, Langston Hughes, and Alan Jay Lerner, he created works that often addressed social and political issues.

After emigrating from Germany in 1933, he became a leading composer of American musical theater. His most famous work, The Threepenny Opera (1928), revolutionized musical theater with songs like "Mack the Knife." Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930) explores capitalism and morality and was banned by the Nazis due to its provocative themes. The Tsar Has His Photograph Taken (1927) combines espionage with an ironic take on political power.

Kurt Weill composed for Broadway, including Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), featuring the famous "September Song," the anti-war piece Johnny Johnson (1936), the opera Street Scene (1947), and the musical Lost in the Stars (1949), which tackles racism in South Africa. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Weill not only found a new home in the United States but also developed a unique musical language, merging Broadway traditions with European elements. His ambition was to create a “people’s opera” for American audiences – sophisticated musical theater that could still appeal to a wide public. 

Weill’s legacy is preserved by the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, which promotes his work and supports scholarly engagement. The foundation also publishes critical editions of his works. Recently, the editor of the critical edition of Weill´s pathbreaking Broadway show Love Life was honored with the prestigious Claude V. Palisca Award by the American Musicological Society. 

"Kurt Weill dedicated his life to the creation of new music theater. This commitment played out in different ways depending upon the culture in which he worked, from the theaters and opera houses of Weimar Germany to Broadway stages in New York City. Certain common threads tied together all parts of his career: a concern for social justice, an aggressive pursuit of highly-regarded playwrights and lyricists as collaborators, and an inspired interest in developing hybrid genres of elegance and power. The entirety of Weill’s oeuvre has experienced a significant renaissance since his death, and especially so since his centenary in 2000. With 2025 representing both the 125th anniversary of his birth and the 75th of his death, his music is poised only to grow in significance in the coming years." – Kurt Weill Foundation

^{In this scene from the world premiere, the protagonist Johann Mattes appears before the newly installed Commissar, who will render judgment, but not justice; Berlin, Städtische Oper, 1932.}

Weill’s rarely performed yet most topical masterpiece, a cautionary tale of the corrosive alliance among money, power, and law. Premiered in the difficult circumstances of 1932 Germany, Die Bürgschaft (The Bond) foretold the horrendous consequences to a society that becomes untethered from mutual trust, personal responsibility, and generosity. The work centers on the relationship between two men in the mythical land of Urb, Johann Mattes and David Orth. At the opening of the work, Orth is willing to post bond for Mattes’s debts, yet by the end, when a new, authoritarian regime has come to power, Orth betrays Mattes to a murderous mob. The chorus intones, at key moments throughout, the thematic phrase: “People do not change, but circumstances change their behavior.” Composed immediately following Weill’s epochal Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, the score shows Weill in complete command of the operatic resources at hand and includes some of the most powerful music he ever wrote.

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Die Bürgschaft (The Bond) – KWF

^{Dejanira and Attendant Gentlemen, Berlin Staatsoper, 1927.} 

A forward-looking, mixed-genre piece of theater that boldly incorporates dance and film elements into a revue-like opera setting. This one-act work, on a libretto by Iwan Goll, evokes a mythological figure, Dejanira, wife of Heracles – who unintentionally caused her husband’s death and then killed herself out of remorse and desperation. In this telling, Dejanira finds herself in the modern world, where she lounges with her Husband, Yesterday’s Lover, and Tomorrow’s Admirer in a luxury hotel on a lake in the Alps. Misunderstood by the men who want to bribe and possess her, she prefers to walk into the lake, and (apparently) drowns. Weill’s music displays a pluralism of styles. Elements of popular music make their way into the score. Aside from Europeanized jazz elements (in the form of a fox-trot, an auto horn, and Weill’s first use of the saxophone), the tango dominates substantial parts of the score. Royal Palace was conceived as a partner in performance with Weill’s one-act opera Der Protagonist, but in its 1927 premiere at the Berlin Staatsoper it was paired instead with Weill’s other cantata-cum-mixed-genre piece on a text by Goll, Der neue Orpheus. The full score disappeared during the Second World War, but its instrumentation was reconstructed by Gunther Schuller and Noam Sheriff from Weill’s detailed notes in a piano-vocal score.

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Royal Palace – KWF

^{A scene from the premiere production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Leipzig, 1930.} 

An instrumental compilation of the most instrumentally effective music from Weill’s great operatic collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Caspar Neher. This assembly of musical highlights was created after Weill’s death by conductor Wilhelm Brückner-Rüggeberg, who partnered with Lotte Lenya on a number of recordings in the 1950s that were central to the first revival of interest in the composer’s works. The Suite contains seven numbers in the sequence in which they occur in the opera, but with cuts and endings appropriate to a concert work. The orchestration is virtually identical with that of the opera, vocal parts being taken by instruments in the appropriate registers.

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Suite from the opera “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” – KWF

From 28 February to 16 March 2025, the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau-Roßlau is celebrating the 125th birthday of the composer Kurt Weill. The motto of 2025 is COLOURS OF LIFE.

Kurt Weill already knew how to appreciate and protect the importance of the multitude of musical and cultural currents, perspectives, traditions, religions and backgrounds that make up the immaterial wealth of this world by always enriching his compositions with influences from a wide variety of cultural and musical directions. That is why he is also a role model for the Kurt Weill Festival 2025, bringing together different directions, trends, styles and worlds. A total of 72 events at 23 venues offer a diverse mix of music, theatre, readings, dance, workshops, guided tours, film screenings and panel discussions. The festival celebrates the cultural diversity and openness that Weill embodied in his works.