A long-lost, priceless statue of the goddess Venus is placed on display in an art museum in New York. A barber, Rodney Hatch, places the engagement ring he plans to give his fiancée onto the statue's finger. The sculpture comes to life and falls in love with the hapless Rodney.
Weill had been in America for eight years by the time he wrote this musical, and his music, though retaining his early haunting power, had evolved into a very different Broadway style.
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg (1885-1935) was an Austrian composer of the Second Viennese School. His compositional style combined Romantic lyricism with the twelve-tone technique. Composed only two operas (Wozzeck (1924) and Lulu (1935, finished posthumously)), they are cornerstones of his relatively slender output and have exerted considerable influence on later generations of composers.
In 15 short scenes, Berg recounts the degradation and demise of Wozzeck, a destitute soldier abused by his captain, experimented on by a doctor, and wracked with suspicion that his partner, Marie, is being unfaithful with a drum major. Driven mad, Wozzeck murders Marie, then drowns himself.
Lulu
The opera tells the story of a mysterious young woman known as Lulu, who follows a downward spiral from a well-kept mistress in Vienna to a street prostitute in London, while being both a victim and a purveyor of destruction.
Arnold Schoenburg
Arnold Schoenberg (1874 - 1951), an Austrian-American composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row.
Moses und Aron
The opera tells the story of a mysterious young woman known as Lulu, who follows a downward spiral from a well-kept mistress in Vienna to a street prostitute in London, while being both a victim and a purveyor of destruction.
Moses und Aron
Moses und Aron deals with much of the same material as Haydn's Israel in Egypt. The first act of Schoenberg's opera focuses on Moses at the burning bush and the miracles described in the early chapters of Exodus. The second act deals with the worship of the golden calf found in Exodus 32.
Drei Satiren [Three Satires]
Schöenberg composed the Three Satires for Mixed Chorus when he was 51 and at the high-point of his career; shortly before beginning the piece, he had been appointed Ferruccio Busoni’s successor at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste, the twelve-tone technique had established itself to a certain degree, and Schöenberg was recognized as a composer as never before.
Kurt Weill
Schöenberg composed the Three Satires for Mixed Chorus when he was 51 and at the high-point of his career; shortly before beginning the piece, he had been appointed Ferruccio Busoni’s successor at Berlin’s Akademie der Künste, the twelve-tone technique had established itself to a certain degree, and Schöenberg was recognized as a composer as never before.
Happy End
The unlikely love story of gangster Bill Cracker and Salvation Army Lieutenant Lillian Holiday.
Happy End is a three-act musical comedy by Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht which first opened in Berlin at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on September 2, 1929. It closed after seven performances. In 1977 it premiered on Broadway, where it ran for 75 performances.
