Because Kurt Weill’s life precisely spanned the first half of the twentieth century, each anniversary does double duty. In 2025, we observe the 125th of his birth and 75th of his death. The first six months of the year promise a parade of significant performances, including not one but TWO productions of Weill’s great but less well-known Broadway Vaudeville Love Life. See the collection below:
6 JANUARY
On 6 January 2025, a performance of Die sieben Todsünden in Cologne featuring Wallis Giunta as Anna along with Ensemble Modern, the male quartet amarcord, and conductor HK Gruber—the same lineup that bowled over Carnegie Hall last season—will be recorded live, to be issued on Ensemble Modern Media. Giunta and Gruber’s recording of the original version of the Sins in English with the Swedish Chamber Orchestra awaits release. The Foundation is providing funding for the premiere recording of the fifteen-player version.
16 - 18 JANUARY
Opera North of Leeds, a company with a long and strong track record presenting both Weill and American musicals, gives three staged concert performances of Love Life from 16–18 January 2025. Conductor James Holmes, Kurt Weill Lifetime Distinguished Achievement Award recipient, will again team up with director Matthew Eberhardt, who staged Street Scene for the company in 2020. BBC Radio 3 will broadcast the performance. A CD release, the first of the entire score of Love Life, as presented in the award-winning critical edition, will follow on Capriccio. The production will also be filmed for possible release on a cable platform.
2 MARCH
On Weill’s birthday, 2 March, the Kurt Weill Fest Dessau will host a solo recital by the 2024 winner of the Lotte Lenya Competition, Ana Karneža. She will present a varied program, including Weill songs. That evening, Ute Lemper will also perform.
26 - 30 MARCH
Encores!, that pioneer of staged musicals in concert, whose first season in 1994 included Lady in the Dark, offers seven performances of Love Life in five days, 26–30 March, at New York City Center. Tony Award-winning actress Victoria Clark will direct a cast who are mostly returning from the 2020 COVID-canceled production, along with music director Rob Berman and choreographer JoAnn Hunter. Starring as Susan and Samuel Cooper are two-time Tony nominee Kate Baldwin and Nicholas Christopher, seen most recently on and off Broadway in Sweeney Todd, Hamilton, Little Shop of Horrors, and the title role of Jelly’s Last Jam at Encores!
28 MARCH
A new musical featuring Jonathan Groff as Bobby Darin, Just in Time, opens on Broadway on 23 April (previews begin 28 March). The show’s roots lie in a Lyrics & Lyricists program at the 92nd Street Y conceived by Ted Chapin in 2018. Darin’s biggest hit, “Mack the Knife,” will be heard multiple times from the stage, most notably in a full performance as the Act I finale, and even during curtain calls. Just in Time is directed by Tony Award winner Alex Timbers.
3-6 APRIL
While Just in Time previews at Circle in the Square, the original German source of “Mack the Knife” moves into Brooklyn Academy of Music for only four performances, 3–6 April. Barrie Kosky brings his acclaimed Berliner Ensemble production of Die Dreigroschenoper to New York for the first time after guest appearances in Rome, Edinburgh, and Adelaide.
12-21 APRIL
Pina Bausch’s legendary choreography for Die sieben Todsünden, seen for the first time during the Wuppertaler Tanzwoche in 1976, returns to its original home for eight performances between 12 and 21 April. Jan Michael Horstmann conducts the Wuppertal Symphony. “Fürchtet euch nicht,” a selection of Weill’s songs created by Bausch as a companion piece, will also be on the bill.
27 APRIL
On 27 April, baritone Roderick Williams performs Weill’s Four Walt Whitman Songs with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vasily Petrenko, sandwiched between Finlandia and Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 7 (“Leningrad”). Williams, one of the best-known classical singers in Britain, essays Weill’s settings of Whitman for the first time.
2-15 MAY
For five performances in early May, Teatro La Fenice in Venice will bring Weill’s first opera, the one-act Der Protagonist, to the stage. The conductor, Markus Stenz, needs no introduction to Weill fans, having conducted an essential recording of Der Silbersee for RCA as well as several major productions of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny; Ezio Toffolutti directs.
14-30 MAY
One legendary Italian theater not enough? Milan’s La Scala will bring back a double bill of Die sieben Todsünden and Mahagonny Songspiel from 2021 with a twist, a twist of Happy End, that is. The double bill, originally streamed, was directed by Irina Brook and conducted by Ricardo Chailly; the cast featured 2015 Lenya Competition First Prize winner Lauren Michelle. All three will return in May, with Wallis Giunta taking part as Lilian Holiday, the female lead in Happy End.
JULY
Deutsche Oper Berlin is gearing up for a new production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in July 2025, its first since Günter Krämer unveiled his staging in 1999. Four years after Barrie Kosky helmed a production at the Komische Oper to wide acclaim, Berlin will see another. The company’s website promises that Benedikt von Peter’s vision will provide“up-close and personal experience. The action extends from the stage to the foyer of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and all points in between. The audience becomes part of a three-dimensional entertainment construct that is inexorably morphing into an apocalyptic game.” The lead roles are taken by Annette Dasch and Nikolai Schukoff; Stefan Klingele conducts.
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