The Spring 2022 issue of the Kurt Weill Newsletter is ready for reading on the KWF website. Our feature articles both look to the past: the near past—the death of Stephen Sondheim last fall—and the more distant past, the Broadway premiere of Street Scene in 1947. Kim H. Kowalke, who has spent much of the last fifty years thinking about Weill and Sondheim, considers Weill’s influence on Sondheim, Sondheim’s reluctance to acknowledge it, and the crucial correspondences between these two giants of musical theater. And we weigh Weill’s pronouncement around the time of the premiere of Street Scene that in seventy-five years it would be considered his “major work.” A prognostication so forceful demands consideration in 2022.
A bonanza of performances in Australia this spring (or rather fall) anchors the review section, which also looks at a new production of Lady in the Dark in Vienna and two recent Weill-focused books. We offer news of Weill, Blitzstein, and the Foundation, with coverage of the latest Lotte Lenya Competition finals in New York City. We recommend that readers experience the finals for themselves by checking out the video, which contains every finalist’s complete performance, on kwf.org.
Because of supply-chain problems, the issue is printed on lower-quality paper than usual, so we recommend the online version.
