ON THE RECORD: Weill & Brecht's Happy End, plus Kern & Hammerstein's Music in the Air

By Steven Suskin
04 Feb 2007

ON THE RECORD: Weill & Brecht's Happy End, plus Kern & Hammerstein's Music in the Air

The first-ever English language recording of Kurt Weill and Bert Brecht's Happy Ending is out on CD, as is an obscure recording of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's unjustly forgotten Music in the Air.

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HAPPY END [Ghostlight 7915584418]
Falling under the category of unexpected pleasures is the original cast album of the American Conservatory Theatre production of the Weill-Brecht Happy End. Pure, unadulterated and acerbic joy. Three quarters of a century after the piece opened and closed in a cloud of controversy, we finally have an English-language cast album. The Happy End score, from 1929, proves to be every bit as flavorful as its 1928 predecessor, The Threepenny Opera.

Michael Feingold has championed this piece since at least 1972, when his adaptation was produced at the Yale Rep. It was mounted on Broadway in 1977 but failed to attract an audience, this despite a knockout performance by Meryl Streep in the central role. (If you think Streep is a powerful performer now, you should have seen the virtual unknown commandeering the Martin Beck stage with all the authority of — well, Mother Courage.)

The Feingold adaptation has been presented here and there over the last 30 years, landing on the A.C.T. stage last June. Ghostlight has seen fit to record it, with smashing results. There are two prior recordings of the piece, including a 1960 German-language LP with Lotte Lenya (on Columbia). But now we have Happy End in English, and it is quite something.

American theatre audiences are perhaps familiar with "Surabaya Johnny" and "The Sailors' Tango," and I defy anyone to escape without "The Bilbao Song" rattling around in their consciousness for a week. There is plenty more to delight us, beginning with the Salvationary hymn "God Bless Rockefeller" and "Song of the Big Shot" (sung here by Sab Shimono, of Mame fame). The cast is headed by Charlotte Cohn (as Hallelujah Lil) and Peter Macon (as Bill Cracker), with an especially strong supporting performance from Linda Muggleston (giving us the "Ballad of the Lily of Hell").

While I count myself a big Weill fan, I didn't quite realize what we were missing. This first English-language cast album of Happy End demonstrates that it is another Threepenny, with an arguably richer score (in that it is less fragmented). Music values are tip-top, with Constantine Kitsopoulos (of the Broadway La Boheme) leading what seems to be Weill's original eight-piece orchestration.

One wonders whether director (and A.C.T. artistic director) Carey Perloff's production was as strong on stage as it is on the CD. In any case, this Happy End belongs on your shelf.

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