| Down in the Valley | |
|---|---|
| folk-opera by Kurt Weill | |
 The composer in 1932 | |
| Librettist | Arnold Sundgaard |
| Language | English |
| Premiere | |
Down in the Valley is a folk-opera in one act by composer Kurt Weill and librettist Arnold Sundgaard, initially composed and conceived for the radio in 1945 then rewritten and produced in 1948. It uses famous American tunes to carry the story (including "Down in the Valley", "The Lonesome Dove", and "Hop Up, My Ladies") and connected by original choral music.
This short opera, originally running only about 20 minutes, was conceived as the first of a series of radio operas by Olin Downes, the music critic of The New York Times , and Charles McArthur, a businessman. The radio idea eventually fell through for lack of a sponsor, although Maurice Abravanel conducted an audition recording that was never broadcast. Hans Heinsheimer, the director of publications at Schirmer, approached Weill with a request for a school opera like Der Jasager for production by the opera department of Indiana University School of Music. Weill expanded and simplified Down in the Valley to a 40-minute version, and the revised version had its world premiere at that university in Bloomington, Indiana in 1948, directed by Hans Busch (son of Fritz Busch) and conducted by Ernst Hoffmann. Alan Jay Lerner's second wife, Marion Bell, played Jennie. The piece was soon broadcast on NBC radio. In 1950, it was broadcast on NBC television. [1] It was subsequently produced in July 1952 in Provincetown, New York at the Provincetown Playhouse, directed by Tony Randall.
In 1960, the piece was played in German at the Staatstheater Hannover, directed by Hartmut Goebel and conducted by Walter Born, with Die sieben Todsünden . In 1984, PBS Television broadcast the piece, directed by Frank Cvitanovich and conducted by Carl Davis. It was filmed in England by the Moving Picture Company. In September 1995, it was presented in Kansas City at the Lyric Opera, directed by Francis Cullinan and conducted by Russell Patterson. The work has also been performed numerous times by amateur forces. It has received a number of recordings.
The action begins in a jail the night before an execution and is told in flashback form.
Brack Weaver, a teenager, falls in love with a girl, Jennie, after an Appalachian prayer meeting. But her father wants her to go to a dance with his shyster creditor, Thomas Bouché, who the father thinks will bail him out of his money troubles. Jennie disobeys and goes to the dance with Brack.
At the dance, the villain gets drunk and threatens the hero with a knife. The two fight, the villain dies (by his own weapon), and Brack is condemned to be hanged. On the night before his execution, he escapes to spend his last hours with Jennie, before turning himself in to meet his fate.
The Threepenny Opera is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution Hauptmann might have made to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
The Merry Widow is an operetta by the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, L'attaché d'ambassade by Henri Meilhac.
The New Moon is an operetta with music by Sigmund Romberg and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, Frank Mandel, and Laurence Schwab. The show was the third in a string of Broadway hits for Romberg written in the style of Viennese operetta. Set in 1792, shortly before the French Revolution, the story centers on a young French aristocrat in disguise, who has fled his country and falls in love with the daughter of a prominent New Orleans planter.
Maurice Abravanel was an American classical music conductor. He is remembered as the conductor of the Utah Symphony Orchestra for over 30 years.
One Touch of Venus is a 1943 musical with music written by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ogden Nash, and book by S. J. Perelman and Nash, based on the 1885 novella The Tinted Venus by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, and very loosely spoofing the Pygmalion myth. The show satirizes contemporary American suburban values, artistic fads and romantic and sexual mores. 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.
John Francis Mauceri is an American conductor, producer, educator and writer. Since making his professional conducting debut almost half a century ago, he has appeared with most of the world's great orchestras, guest-conducted at the premiere opera houses, produced and musically supervised Tony and Olivier Award-winning Broadway musicals, and served as university faculty and administrator. Through his varied career, he has taken the lead in the preservation and performance of many genres of music and supervised and conducted important premieres by composers as diverse as Debussy, Stockhausen, Korngold, Hindemith, Bernstein, Sibelius, Ives, Elfman and Shore. He is also a leading performer of music banned by the Third Reich and especially music of Hollywood's émigré composers.
Ramón Vinay was a famous Chilean operatic tenor with a powerful, dramatic voice. He is probably best remembered for his appearances in the title role of Giuseppe Verdi's tragic opera Otello.
Sigurd is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by the French composer Ernest Reyer on a libretto by Camille du Locle and Alfred Blau. Like Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung, the story is based on the Nibelungenlied and the Eddas, with some crucial differences from the better known Wagnerian version. The whole opera can best be described as an epic with techniques of the grand opera.
Street Scene is an American opera by Kurt Weill (music), Langston Hughes (lyrics), and Elmer Rice (book). Written in 1946 and premiered in Philadelphia that year, Street Scene is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play of the same name by Rice.
Fritz Busch was a German conductor.
The Seven Deadly Sins is a satirical ballet chanté in seven scenes composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht in 1933 under a commission from Boris Kochno and Edward James. It was translated into English by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman and more recently by Michael Feingold. It was the last major collaboration between Weill and Brecht.
The Photographer is a three-part mixed media performance accompanied by music by composer Philip Glass. The libretto is based on the life and homicide trial of 19th-century English photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Commissioned by the Holland Festival, the opera was first performed in 1982 at the Royal Palace of Amsterdam.
Gurre-Lieder are a tripartite oratorio followed by a melodramatic epilogue for five vocal soloists, narrator, three choruses and grand orchestra. The work, which is based on an early song cycle for soprano, tenor and piano, was composed by the then-Austrian composer Arnold Schönberg from 1900 to 1903. Following a break he resumed orchestration in 1910 and completed it in November of 1911. It sets to music the poem cycle Gurresange by the Danish novelist Jens Peter Jacobsen.
Louis Isidore "Buddy" Bregman was an American arranger and conductor.
Der Silbersee: ein Wintermärchen is a 'play with music' in three acts by Kurt Weill to a German text by Georg Kaiser. The subtitle is an allusion to Heinrich Heine's 1844 satirical epic poem, Germany. A Winter's Tale.
Der Protagonist is an opera in one act by Kurt Weill, his Op. 15. The German libretto was written by Georg Kaiser based on his own play of the same name of (1920). Weill's first surviving opera has been described as Literaturoper.
Die Bürgschaft is an opera in three acts by Kurt Weill. Caspar Neher wrote the German libretto after the parable Der afrikanische Rechtspruch by Johann Gottfried Herder. Composed from August to October 1931, it was premiered on 10 March 1932 at the Städtische Oper in Berlin, Germany.
The Eternal Road is an opera-oratorio with spoken dialogue in four acts by Kurt Weill with a libretto, by Austrian novelist and playwright Franz Werfel and translated into English by Ludwig Lewisohn.
This Land Sings: Inspired by the Life and Times of Woody Guthrie is a song cycle for soprano singer, baritone singer and chamber ensemble composed in 2016 by the GRAMMY Award-winning American composer Michael Daugherty. The work is an original musical tribute by Michael Daugherty to the singer-songwriter and political activist Woody Guthrie (1912–1967).
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