ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Weill: Arms and the Cow
Opera North, Bradford , 30 March 2006

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 14 Feb 2007

The progress of Kurt Weill’s Der Kuhandel, an unfinished two-act operetta in German, through A Kingdom for a Cow which flopped at the Savoy Theatre in London in June 1935, back to Der Kuhhandel and finally metamorphosing into Arms and the Cow as presented by Opera North at the Alhambra, Bradford, on 30 March this year, is complicated in the extreme. The story begins in France , where Weill lived for two years after leaving Germany in March 1933. There he agreed to collaborate with Robert Vambery, a fellow exile, originally Hungarian, who had assisted with the first Dreigroschenoper at the Schiffbauerdamm theatre. As work progressed, negotiations for a staging in Zurich fell through, and eventually a contract was agreed with the Savoy , but only if the piece were modified to accord with English sensibilities. This, after all, was the world of G&S and Noel Coward! The show was well received by the press, but not by the public, in spite of the presence of Webster Booth and the conductor Muir Matheson and it closed within three weeks.

Weill withdrew the work, with the stated intention of returning to the original, but that never happened, and the score was raided to provide music for subsequent, American, shows. Some twenty years or so after Weill’s death, his rehearsal pianist during his last years, Lys Symonette, (another German emigreé, the Mainz-born music student Bertlies Weinschenk, married Randolph Symonette, who was the original Hangman in Firebrand of Florence ) reworked the Kuhhandel fragments into a viable score, first performed in Bautzen 1994 (at which Vambery, aged 86, was present). It has since been performed in several provincial German theatres, including a production at the Dessau Kurt Weill Festival in 2000. An English translation of the Vambery lyrics by Jeremy Sams was performed in concert at the BBC’s Kurt Weill weekend in January 2000.

The staging by David Pountney, first seen in Bradford in March 2006 is a joint venture involving the Bregenz Festival, Opera North (using the Sams English translation, spiced with topical references!), and the Volksoper, Vienna, whose repertoire it enters in 2006–7. The setting is a Caribbean island, divided into two states coexisting quite amicably, until the arrival of Mr Jones, an American arms dealer. The President of Santa Maria is persuaded that he needs arms, since the neighbouring state of Ucqua, according to Jones, is itself arming. To pay for the weaponry, the citizens of Santa Maria are subjected to a special tax, and, on the day of their wedding, the one possession belonging to Juan and Juanita, their cow, is confiscated in lieu of payment…..

Pountney and his designer, Duncan Hayler steer clear of references obvious to German audiences, where the division between the two lands might be marked as the River Elbe. This is definitely a run-down Caribbean resort, littered and graffitied, with a back-drop of washing lines and palm trees, though the islanders are wearing something suspiciously like lederhosen. By the time I caught up with it, in Sheffield in June, the production was beginning to have a run-down feel to it as well – there was some slackness in the chorus and not all the words came across clearly. This was especially true of the Juan, tenor Leonardo Capalbo, but not of Deborah Norman, who had just taken over the role of Juanita. A surprising – but imaginative – piece of casting was the one-time Tristan Jeffrey Lawton as President Mendez, who spent most of the evening snoozing on a suspended sofa, coming down to earth every so often to make his regular, boring speech about his pacific principles (always accompanied by harp and strings, with a rude trombone glissando). Best of all was Donald Maxwell as the War Minister, General Conchas, who strutted around, thoroughly enjoying himself, in a part tailor made for him. No difficulty with the words here! As for last season’s Venus, the conductor was James Holmes, whose Weill credentials are, by now, legendary.

As might be expected from the history of compromise and pragmatism, Der Kuhhandel does not represent Kurt Weill at his best. We can only imagine the kind of witty and acerbic piece which might have resulted from a fully prepared premiere for a German-speaking audience, given the context and the material. As it is, it needs a little additional fizz – though maybe Pountney’s over enthusiastic approach did more harm than good. There seemed never to be a moment were anybody was allowed to stand still, and the brothel scene, in which Juanita is put to work (cleaning dishes!) to earn enough to buy a new cow, really overstayed its welcome. Still, a good time was had by all.

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