Research Catalog

Title

Speak low (when you speak love) : the letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya / edited and translated by Lys Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke.

Author

Weill, Kurt, 1900-1950.

Publication

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1996.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Symonette, Lys.
• Kowalke, Kim H., 1948-

Description

554 pages 62 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations; 26 cm

Summary

• Not since perhaps Eleanor and Franklin has there been so provocative a public pair: fiercely independent and yet codependent, they spent twenty-five years discovering a way they could live together after they figured out that they couldn't live apart. In 1932 they separated; in 1933 they divorced. They reunited in Paris in 1935 and then went to New York; in 1937 they remarried and together applied for American citizenship.
• Except for brief periods of separation, their relationship remained what it had always been, simultaneously tenacious and tumultuous.
• Yet Weill and Lenya required one another on a creative level that transcended ordinary emotional, erotic, and professional bonds. Although she was musically untrained, Lenya's canny theatrical sensitivity and innate intelligence enabled her to become Weill's most trusted critic as well as his most famous interpreter, especially as Jenny in The Threepenny Opera.
• As Weill rhapsodized, "When I feel this longing for you, I think most of all of the sound of your voice, which I love like a very force of nature.".
• The letters are filled with artistic news, reactions to world events, reports on work-in-progress, and reflections on the creative process and the experience of exile. We get a backstage view of German music and theater, the American musical theater in the late thirties and forties, and the Hollywood studios.
• Together Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya have come to symbolize what was most vibrant about the experiment of Weimar culture in the Golden Twenties and what was most vital among the contributions to American culture by Central European emigres.

Uniform Title

Correspondence. Selections. English

Alternative Title

Correspondence.

Subjects

• Weill, Kurt, 1900-1950 > Correspondence
• Actors > Correspondence
• Lenya, Lotte > Correspondence
• Composers > Correspondence

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (p. 511-524 ) and index.

Language (note)

• Includes English correspondence and translations of correspondence from German.

Contents

Introduction: Weill and Lenya -- Introduction: The Letters -- Introduction: The Edition -- Prologue: Before They Met -- Pt. 1. Letters Translated from the German. 1. Berlin: 1924-1933 / Letters 1-38. 2. Paris, London: 1933-1935 / Letters 39-148. 3. New York, Hollywood: 1935-1938 / Letters 149-212 -- Pt. II. Letters in the Original English. 4. Lenya on the Road: 1941-1942 / Letters 213-300. 5. New City, Hollywood: 1942-1944 / Letters 301-366. 6. Hollywood, Palestine, Hollywood: 1940-1950 / Letters 367-393. Epilogue: After He Died - Lenya, 1950-1981 -- Appendix A: List of Pet Names and Private Expressions -- Appendix B: A Note on Money Matters.

ISBN

0520078535 (alk. paper)

LCCN

95040544

OCLC

• 33101314
• ocm33101314

Owning Institutions

Columbia University Libraries