ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Weill Festival, Berlin to Broadway
Opéra de Lyon, June 2006

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 14 Feb 2007

The title may be a little clichéd, but is as good as any for the mini Kurt Weill festival presented by Opéra de Lyon. Although it ran for four weeks, there were only three programmes on offer – and only one of these, which I did not attend (though there will be an opportunity to catch up with it at this year’s Edinburgh Festival), a double bill comprising Die sieben Todsünden with a staged version of the radio cantata Der Lindberghflug was presented at the Lyon opera itself.

The first staging in France of One Touch of Venus opened on 1 June at the Theatre de la Renaissance, a utilitarian building in the southern suburb of Oullins, which has a reputation for innovative staging of everything from classical theatre to cabaret. The director was Jean Lacornerie, and the designer Bruno de Lavenère. Although the show may not have had the opulence of a Broadway spectacular, it still rattled along in highly entertaining fashion. No need for any theatrical magic for Venus’ transformation from statue to siren – she just rose, like Lazarus, from her packing case and got on with the business of stealing the show. There was a delicious frisson in the fact that Hélène Delavault in the title role – with a fruity voice nearer mezzo than soprano – was significantly tall, while Rodney Hatch the barber, for whom she falls (being the first chap in the modern world she sets eyes on) was somewhat shorter, as were the two other ladies in his life: his fiancée Gloria and her awful, raucous mother. The two ballet scenes – ‘ Forty Minutes for Lunch’, and ‘ Venus in Ozone Heights’ (which serves to persuade Venus that though this hugely desirable piece of real estate may be just the thing for family orientated New Yorkers, it involves cooking suppers and having babies: not quite the career for an Anatolian goddess) were done in simple shadow-play. A couple of glass screens etched with the word ‘ café’ denoted the bus station, leaving plenty of room for the ‘ Way out West in New Jersey’ dance routine, which was riotous enough without the orchestral pianist jumping onto the stage to show off his prowess as a tap dancer!

The pre-show publicity had promised dialogue in French and the songs in English, which turned out not to be the case: only a few choice lines in were sung in English (with French surtitles!). So most of those neat Ogden Nash rhymes – ‘What memoirs them was!’ – were lost, though the audience’s reaction indicated that the French translations (by Hélène Delavault herself) were suitably idiomatic. There were no weaknesses in the other parts – though why Savoury and his cheeky assistant Molly were dressed as Harlequin and Columbine I am not sure. The conductor was Scot Stroman, well known to London audiences as a jazz trombonist, conductor of various ensembles and still with time to teach at the Guildhall. The members of the Lyon opera orchestra could have been playing on Broadway all their lives.

The Berlin part of the umbrella title came in the form of a double bill comprising Der Jasager and Der Neinsager, staged at the Théâtre Nouvelle Génération in the north of the city. Der Jasager was a happy collaboration with Brecht in response to a commission from the 1930 Berlin Neue Musik festival which was that year concerned with works written for children; Hindemith’s Wir bauen eine Stadt and works by Dessau and Ernst Toch were also included. In the event, Weill withdrew the work in protest at the Festival’s refusal to include Die Massnahme, Hans Eisler’s setting of another Brecht text, and Der Jasager had its first performance live from the studios of Radio Berlin on 23 June 1930, and a student staging the next evening. It was a huge success, and over the next couple of years was performed widely in schools in Germany . A Teacher is planning to take a group of students on a dangerous trek across the mountains, and reluctantly agrees to include the Boy in the party, who needs to fetch medicine for his sick mother. During the arduous journey, the Boy too becomes sick, and the Teacher considers turning back, or, in accordance with the ancient custom, should he be hurled into the valley?. The Boy, asked for his decision, says ‘Yes’. Cue for discussion.

Such lively criticism resulted from the first performances that Brecht provided a companion piece. Der Neinsager repeats the action exactly, up until the point of the fateful question, This time the boy answers ‘No’.

Weill did not provide music for the second piece, since he was now pre-occupied with Die Bürgschaft, and, of course, in 1933 the works were banned. In the post-War years, their popularity has recovered, and for a production in Stuttgart in 1993 music for Der Neinsager was provided by the (East) German film composer Reiner Bredmeyer, and this, too, has been revived in Germany , most notably at the Dessau Weill Festival this year (2006). Lyon took another course – to recapitulate Weill’s Jasager music until the question is posed, and then, following a discussion on the new situation, ending with a restatement of the opening ‘chorus of acquiescence’.

The children’s chorus – a group attached to the Opéra de Lyon – were spectacularly well drilled and enthusiastic, under the direction of the young Frenchman Jérémie Rhorer, accompanied by a further group from the Lyon Opera orchestra. Two members of the Lyon opera, London-trained Pierrick Boisseau as the Teacher and Sophie Van De Woestyne as the Mother, added the finishing adult touches. The production (Richard Brunel) could not have been simpler – merely a white scrim box which retreated into the distance as the journey progressed revealing a stony terrain beneath. The second part was staged as the children’s ‘alternative view’: the adult parts now acted by members of the children’s chorus, and the staging in a sort of mirror image.

But most impressive of all was the number of children in the audience – some surely too young to realise the significance of all that they were seeing, but certainly not too young to be there at all!

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