Watching a Spanish production in HD. Incredible! Art with balls and apparently eternal relevance.
I endorse this review ...
January 13, 2012
Format: DVD Verified Purchase
I was NOT prepared for this dvd. Diffidently (after all, what does Madrid know about Weill?), I ordered it simply to have another copy of MAHOGANNY, a work I adore.
Can you spell "schmuck"? That's what I was calling myself ten minutes into the performance. It is, simply, the most intelligent production of this "opera" I have seen (pray, be not impressed; I've seen only three others, but I've re-seen them many times).
Conducting: one couldn't wish for better. The cast: not one dud amoung them, not a one (check out Jenny's trill in "Moon of Alabama" - it is to swoon). The mise en scene? Oh, man, don't get me started. It's like a Broadway show; it's like the best of contemporary opera; it's like the old 60's days of the Living Theater. Yet it's too something "also" on which right now I can't put my finger. To borrow a phrase from Talulah B, it's a goddamn miracle. The chorus? Spot on.
Underlying all is the translation of Brecht's libretto into American English. It's superb, comperable to the translation (Blitzstein's ?) of the Threepenny Opera that put Weill/Brecht on the Manhattan scene back in the 50's. For a while my Inner Purist (who can be SUCH a bore!) fussed about losing the German...until I remembered that Weill, upon coming to Manhattan and claiming a historical place among Broadway's greats, being so ashamed of his native country rolling over for the Nazis, refused to speak a word of German. That made it all right. That made it OK. In this performance, Mahoganny, takes its place in musical history in an entirely new context: Weill in Manhattan. I think he would have loved it.
But all that's intellectual twaddle. If you have a love for Weill and his works, please do not deny yourself the pleasure of this performance. And don't expect a better one anytime soon.
I know of none better, though I know of one very close.
Madrid, bravo!
Er...make that bravissimi! Tutti!
Disclosure: I am not acquainted with anyone involved in the production of this dvd, nor do I have any financial interest therein.
