| Der Kuhhandel | |
|---|---|
| Operetta by Kurt Weill | |
 The composer in 1932 | |
| Translation | A Kingdom for a Cow |
| Librettist | Robert Vambery |
| Language | German |
| Premiere | |
Der Kuhhandel (A Kingdom for a Cow or Arms and the Cow) is an operetta by Kurt Weill. The German libretto was written by Robert Vambery.
Kurt Weill and Robert Vambery were both refugees from Nazi Germany. They met in Paris in 1933 and began work on the operetta in 1934. Following the completion of the libretto, attempts to interest theatre managers in Paris and Zürich in staging the operetta proved abortive, and Weill turned to other projects, leaving most of the musical numbers complete but unorchestrated.
The German word Kuhhandel means "cattle trading". In German slang of the 1930s it referred to shady manoeuvrings by politicians – "horse trading" in English or American usage. [1]
In early 1935, Weill and Vambery collaborated with Reginald Arkell (book) and Desmond Carter (lyrics) on a three-act English-language musical comedy version of the operetta called A Kingdom for a Cow. This premiered on 28 June 1935 at the Savoy Theatre, London, under the baton of Muir Mathieson and starring the popular young tenor Webster Booth. [2] It achieved a critical success but failed at the box-office, running for only two weeks. [3]
In 1978, Lys Symonette, Weill's friend and assistant, prepared a reconstruction of the original two-act operetta, and this was published by Schott Musik in 1981. [4] This version was first performed in concert in Düsseldorf on 22 March 1990 (conductor: Jan Latham Koenig) [4] and on stage at the Deutsch-Sorbisches Volkstheater, Bautzen (conductor: Dieter Kempe, director Wolfgang Poch) in 1994. [4]
The United States premiere, in an English-language version by Jeremy Sams, took place on 11 April 2000 at the Juilliard School (conductor, Randall Behr, director Frank Corsaro). [5] The first performance in Britain of the Symonette version was given by Opera North on 30 March 2006, at the Alhambra Theatre, Bradford. The conductor was Jim Holmes and the director was David Pountney, who also collaborated with Sams on a revised translation. [6] This production was first seen (in German) at the Kornmarkttheater, Bregenz, on 13 August 2004. [7]
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| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, concert version 22 March 1990 (Conductor: Jan Latham Koenig) |
|---|---|---|
| Juan Santos | tenor | Eberhard Büchner |
| Juanita Sanchez | soprano | Lucy Peacock |
| President Mendez | tenor | Walter Raffeiner |
| Leslie Jones | baritone | Christian Schotenröhr |
| Ximenes | tenor | Udo Holdorf |
| General Garcia Conchaz | baritone | Osker Hillebrandt |
| Juan's mother | soprano | Ingebord Most |
| Madame Odette | soprano | Renate Zimmermann |
Juan owns a cow, whose milk generates enough money to enable him to marry his sweetheart, Juanita, who has no dowry. Meanwhile, the peace-loving President Mendez and his advisor Ximenes are approached by Jones, an American arms dealer, who fabricates reports that Ucqua is re-arming and persuades them to buy weapons from him.
As Santa Maria is short of money, Mendez and Ximenez introduce a new tax to pay for the weapons. Juan cannot pay, his cow is impounded and the wedding with Juanita is called off. Juan works as a stevedore to earn enough money to get the cow back, but a second attempt at a wedding is again foiled by the impounding of the cow. This is because a second tax has had to be imposed at the behest of the war-mongering General Conchas, who plans manoeuvres on the border with Ucqua. Juan is called up into the army, and, to earn money for a replacement cow, Juanita goes into the city to work as a prostitute at Madame Odette's establishment. Jones and Ximenes conspire to replace Mendez as President by Conchas, who organises a putsch and takes power.
Conchas visits Madame Odette's to celebrate his takeover and is captivated by Juanita. Next day, despite a hangover, he takes part in a military parade organised by Ximenes. Juan, who has no desire to be a soldier, punches the General and is sentenced to death. Luckily, the guns that Jones has sold to Santa Maria fail to go off, whereupon it turns out that the guns that he has also sold to Ucqua are also defective. President Conchas opts for peaceful coexistence with Ucqua and pardons Juan, who can now reclaim his cow with the help of his army pay and Juanita's earnings, and at last the couple can get married.
Musically, Der Kuhhandel is closer to the bitter-sweet German works (e.g. The Threepenny Opera , Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny ) that Weill was leaving behind him than to the Broadway operas like Knickerbocker Holiday , One Touch of Venus and Love Life that were to follow. An important influence, however, and one not common to either group, is the music of Offenbach: Weill described the piece as "an operetta influenced by Offenbach". [9]
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries.
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 in 1943.
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Bertlies "Lys" Symonette was a German-American pianist, chorus singer and musical stage performer. In 1945 she took a job as rehearsal pianist, coach, understudy or multi-tasking "swing-girl" for The Firebrand of Florence, a Kurt Weill musical making its Broadway debut. This proved to be the start of a new career as Weill's musical assistant: from that point a principal focus of her professional life was on the composer and, more particularly after his early death in 1950, the career of his widow, the stage performer Lotte Lenya. When Lenya died, in 1981, Lys Symonette was appointed vice-president of the Kurt Weill Foundation, also serving as its "musical executive". When she died her friend and frequent collaborator, Prof. Kim H. Kowalke, published an affectionate tribute in which he described her as "the last and irreplaceable link to the inner artistic circle of Weill and Lenya".
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Olivier Tambosi is an Austrian opera and operetta director.
Robert Vambery was a theatre director, author and teacher, associated with the works of Kurt Weill.
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