A Pray by Blecht
A01=Professor Rebecca Schmid
A01=Rebecca Schmid
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Anxiety of Influence
Author_Professor Rebecca Schmid
Author_Rebecca Schmid
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Candide
Category1=Non-Fiction
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Category=ATD
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Category=AVGC9
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Category=AVP
COP=United States
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Die Dreigroschenoper
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Harold Bloom
Kurt Weill
Lady in the Dark
Language_English
Leonard Bernstein
Marc Blitzstein
musicals
operas
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Price_€50 to €100
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Street Scene
The Cradle Will Rock
Trouble in Tahiti
West Side Story
Product details
- ISBN 9781648250606
- Weight: 476g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 20 Jun 2023
- Publisher: Boydell & Brewer Ltd
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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The first study to explore the crucial influence of Kurt Weill on operas and musicals by Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein.
Theodor Adorno famously proclaimed that the model of Kurt Weill could not be repeated. Yet Weill's stage works set an inescapable precedent for composers on both sides of the Atlantic. Rebecca Schmid explores how Weill's formal innovations in particular laid the groundwork for operas and musicals by Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein, although both composers resisted or downplayed his aesthetic contribution to American tradition. Comparative analysis based on Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence and other modes of intertextuality reveals that the principles of Weill's opera reform would catalyze an indigenous movement in sophisticated, socially engaged music theatre.
Weill, Blitzstein, and Bernstein: A Study of Influence focuses on works that represent different phases of Weill's mission to renew the genre of opera, evolving from Die Dreigroschenoper to the musical play Lady in the Dark and the Broadway Opera Street Scene. Blitzstein and Bernstein in turn defied formal boundaries with The Cradle Will Rock, Regina, Trouble in Tahiti, Candide, and West Side Story - part of a short-lived movement in mid-twentieth century America that coincided with a renaissance for Weill's German-period works following the premiere of Blitzstein's translation, The Threepenny Opera, under Bernstein's baton. The unpublished A Pray by Blecht, for which Bernstein rejoined Stephen Sondheim and Jerome Robbins, his collaborators on West Side Story, deepens the connection of Bernstein's aesthetic to Weill.
REBECCA SCHMID holds a PhD in musicology and media studies from Humboldt University, Berlin, and is an independent scholar with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century music.
