FULL LOTTE LENYA Warum bin ich nicht froh? Documentary Germany 2020
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: LOTTE LENYA Warum bin ich nicht froh?
- Composer: Weill Kurt
- Libretto:
- Venue & Opera Company: various
- Recorded: 2020
- Type: Other
- Singers:
- Conductor:
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director: Katja Duregger
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: ARTE
- Date Published: 2022
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, desubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Lotte Lenya is still considered one of the most important interpreters of the musical theater of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, which she played a key role in shaping in the 1920s. Her unmistakable singing style made the songs from “The Threepenny Opera”, “Mahagonny Songspiel” and “Happy End” into unique works.
Lotte Lenya’s “Pirate Jenny” from the “Threepenny Opera” by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill made theater history. Lenya sang the ballad in the premiere in Berlin in 1928, in the film adaptation by G. W. Pabst in 1931 and again in the 1950s in the Broadway production of the “Threepenny Opera”. To this day she is considered one of the most important interpreters of the Brecht/Weill musical theater.
Her career began in Berlin in the 1920s when she met her future husband, the composer Kurt Weill. Weill recognized her great singing talent and designed roles especially for Lenya, who became an icon of the Golden Twenties.
In 1935, the couple fled to New York, where Weill enjoyed commercial success on Broadway with “Knickerbocker Holiday” and other musicals. But it was only through Lenya’s performance that songs like “September Song” and “Speak Low” became classics.
After Weill’s early death in 1950, Lenya devoted herself to preserving his extensive oeuvre and helped his songs become world famous. In the 1960s, she enjoyed her own great successes in Hollywood and on Broadway. She played KGB agent Rosa Klebb in the Bond film “From Russia with Love” and Fraulein Schneider in the musical “Cabaret”.
Lotte Lenya always brought her own life experiences to the stage – unfiltered and direct. The documentary lets the actress speak for herself – in television interviews and letters that testify to her wit, tenderness and thirst for life and are read by Lenya’s admirer Meret Becker.
Quoted from ARTE