The Threepenny Opera cast album on CD

I have an unrequited love for Kurt Weill in general and for The Threepenny Opera in specific. Why unrequited, do you ask? Well, what has it ever done for me? That's pretty cynical, but then so is this whole show.

I was in a college production of 3PO a looooong time ago. Listening to this cast album has reminded me of some people who were very dear to me at the time--as college theater people inevitably are to one another. And then we go off to other ends of the planet and do things like become lawyers.

This 1954 Broadway production was the first revival of the show. It ran until 1961 and did much to cement Kurt Weill's place in musical history. The cast is great and features Beatrice Arthur (with the huskiest voice ever), Jo Sullivan (who would later marry Frank Loesser) as Polly Peachum, Charlotte Rae as Mrs. Peachum, and the widow Weill Lotte Lenya as Pirate Jenny. According to the Broadway database, the show has been revived five times since then.

Clearly, I am not the only one with a love of this material.

The Threepenny Opera
Music by Kurt Weill
German book and lyrics by Bertold Brecht
English adaptation of book and lyrics by Marc Blitzstein
Cast: Beatrice Arthur, Charlotte Rae, Jo Sullivan, Scott Merrill, Martin Wolfson, Lotte Lenya

Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill concert performance on DVD

In the 1990s an icon of the 60s recasts herself as an icon of Weimar Germany. When Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill she channels Weill-muse Lotte Lenya. Ms. Faithfull with her pianist Paul Trueblood includes 11 songs, 8 of which are from the Weill European catalogue in this hour-long cabaret act which was filmed in 1997 for the Montreal International Jazz Festival.

Among the "usual" Weill fare (Alabama Song, Pirate Jenny, Surabaya Johnny) is the haunting anti-war song "What was Sent to the Soldier's Wife" and three non-Weill songs, including a Noel Coward piece. Ms. Faithfull provides a bit of narrative to introduce the songs and string the Weill/Brecht pieces into their history, but for the most part this is a straight-forward cabaret recital, and the fans clearly love her.

In a video-taped press conference included as a DVD extra, Ms. Faithfull says she has lived with these songs her whole life, as her mother was an Austrian ballet dancer who had 78s of Weill's music when she emigrated to Britain after World War II. She sings them as if she's lived with them, as well as having lived with the emotions behind the songs. And while Faithfull might not live up to ghost of Lenya, she keeps the tradition of the whiskey-voice chanteuse (is there a German version of that word?) alive for a new generation.

Also in the press conference, Faithfull credits the translations of the German to an Irish writer friend of hers, whose name I didn't catch. The translation that srtuck me was for "Pirate Jenny" from The Three Penny Opera; it was unlike any version I had heard before and didn't flow with the music like I expected.

Another entry that's not really a Broadway musical. Points for exploring, but maybe points taken off for not very aptly managing the order of discs I watch.

Marianne Faithfull Sings Kurt Weill
Music by Kurt Weill, Noel Coward and others
Text by Bertold Brecht and others
Filmed at the 1997 Montreal International Jazz Festival
Released on DVD
Cast: Marianne Faithfull, Paul Trueblood