Seven songs/The Seven Deadly Sins
Seven songs by Kurt Weill/
»The Seven Deadly Sins« Ballett with vocals by Kurt Weill
Seven songs by Kurt Weill
Text by Kurt Weill, Walter Mehring, Roger Fernay, Bertolt Brecht and Ogden Nash
»The Seven Deadly Sins«
Ballett with vocals by Kurt Weill
Text by Bertolt Brecht
Premiere
Sunday, 12.02.2012, 19:00
Before their flight to the USA, Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht wrote a last joint work whilst in exile – The Seven Deadly Sins, inaugurally performed in Paris in 1933. It portrays the odyssey of two sisters, both called Anna and essentially the two different spirits of a single being – one »beautiful, the other practical«. Anna is sent to the big cities by her family in order to get a career as a dancer and thus earn money for the construction of a new little house "in Louisiana, where the waters of the Mississippi flow beneath the moon". Anna must travel through seven stages and sell herself. Here Brecht reinterprets the classic deadly sins, such as sloth, pride, lust, and envy, as virtues. However, in unfair circumstances, only rich people can afford such a thing as pride – Anna has to show her nakedness when the people pay for it. Weill contrasts his inimitably seductive song style with the parodically demure men's quartet (!) of the family.