The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music Explore 120+ years of composer Kurt Weill’s legacy here. | Founded in 1962 by Lotte Lenya. Home to the 🎙️

05/29/2026

sings the famous “Mack the Knife” by Kurt Weill ⭐️🎶✨

Malla stars as Mackie Navaja in ’s touring production of LA ÓPERA DE LOS TRES CENTAVOS. Directed by Mario Vega with musical direction by Miguel Malla, the production is currently enjoying an extensive tour of Spain. Its next stop will be Teatre L’Artesà in El Prat de Llobregat on May 30th!

Video: “Coque Malla “Mack the knife” | LA ÓPERA DE LOS TRES CENTAVOS | Programa “Futuro Imperfecto (RTVE)” via Barco Pirata Productions on Youtube

elpratdellobregat laoperadelostrescentavos

This week, Kurt Weill’s musical comedy “play with music” HAPPY END is the focus of a spectacular partnership between , ....
05/27/2026

This week, Kurt Weill’s musical comedy “play with music” HAPPY END is the focus of a spectacular partnership between , .saratoga, , and .

To make things even more exciting, the production features FOUR Lotte Lenya Competition alumni. This year’s Kurt Weill/Lotte Lenya Artist plays The Fly and is joined by as the Major, as Lieutenant Lillian Holiday, and .zacher as Benny!

This week’s shows:

⭐ On May 28 and 30, the touring production lands in Saratoga Springs, NY for performances on ’s home turf.

⭐ On May 29, the show moves to in Hudson, NY.

Further performances of this Weill/Brecht/Hauptmann “rich, smoky evocation of Chicago in 1919” (Mel Gussow, 1972) will take place this July!

Image: , , ,

In 1941, the Weill/Gershwin/Hart musical LADY IN THE DARK hit Broadway theaters with a splash, leading to a record sale ...
05/22/2026

In 1941, the Weill/Gershwin/Hart musical LADY IN THE DARK hit Broadway theaters with a splash, leading to a record sale of film rights for the show. Just a few years after the movie version premiered, Robert Russell Bennett, the highly skilled orchestrator of the film’s score, created a symphonic evolution of Weill’s themes: LADY IN THE DARK—SYMPHONIC NOCTURNE.

The NOCTURNE has recently seen a comeback, championed by a number of prominent conductors: ✨🎵

🎶 In a few weeks, .gaffigan brings the Nocturne to the on June 11, 12, and 13

🎶 led a 2019 Berlin performance, viewable with subscription to ’s Digital Concert Hall

🎶 Robin Ticciati conducted the work with this past March

🎶 .conductor led the vanguard, including a 2005 recording with the

Head to the link in our bio to learn more about this unique piece in our May E-News! ⬆️🗞️✨

★★★★ “The jewel in the crown…Gruber’s razor-sharp yet flexible interpretation drips idiomatic venom.” — The Guardian.A n...
05/20/2026

★★★★ “The jewel in the crown…Gruber’s razor-sharp yet flexible interpretation drips idiomatic venom.” — The Guardian.

A new album has arrived 🎉📀🎙 In partnership with mezzo-soprano .giunta and vocal group , HK Gruber and add DIE SIEBEN TODSÜNDEN to their unmatched discography.

The recording is a live capture of a 2025 performance at Cologne’s that crowned a series of touring engagements, triumphantly including one at New York’s the previous year.

Entitled “Dancing on a Volcano,” it also features works by composers Paul Hindemith, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, and Arnold Schoenberg. The liner notes describe the works as “reflecting the tensions between artistic awakening and political upheaval – a time of creative liberation, social upheaval, and musical extremes.”

Head to the link in our bio to read more in our May E-News!

Images:

Weill’s THREEPENNY OPERA is getting a refresh with ’s touring production, LA ÓPERA DE LOS TRES CENTAVOS! The production ...
05/15/2026

Weill’s THREEPENNY OPERA is getting a refresh with ’s touring production, LA ÓPERA DE LOS TRES CENTAVOS! The production stars in the role of Mackie Navaja, and is directed by Mario Vega with musical direction by Miguel Malla.✨🎶

The unique new production “maintains a dynamic and challenging rhythm, where black humor is intertwined with an incisive critique of capitalism and current power structures, making this production not only a stage show, but a living essay on inequality and social morality” (Sergio Vargas, CULTURAMAS).

“The action moves to a London between the wars, sunk in corruption and inequality. An abandoned slaughterhouse becomes the symbolic setting of a society where human life is processed like cheap meat.” — Teatro Pérez Galdós.

’s production heads to the Palacio Festivales Cantabria in Santander, Spain next, on May 15th! 🎭

Images: Sergio Parra; Barco Pirata Productions

Video: “Coque Malla “Mack the knife” | LA ÓPERA DE LOS TRES CENTAVOS | Programa “Futuro Imperfecto (RTVE)” via Barco Pirata Productions on Youtube

musicales

A neglected Weill masterpiece. A disturbingly relevant opera. The announcement of the 2026 Lotte Lenya Competition final...
04/16/2026

A neglected Weill masterpiece. A disturbingly relevant opera. The announcement of the 2026 Lotte Lenya Competition finalists. Sign us up! 🎶

Current Weill performance highlights across the globe include:

🎶 Weill’s last work composed in Germany, DER SILBERSEE, in its landmark new production by , received rave reviews and was “a rapturous theatrical hybrid that’s opera, operetta, and dramatic theater all wrapped into one…” (Mitchell Oldham, Splash Magazines Worldwide).

🎶 DIE BÜRGSCHAFT, the greatest among the less-known works of Weill’s oeuvre, awaits a bold production to relaunch it into a world that has begun to look disturbingly similar to the proto-Nazi Germany of its creation. “Everything happens according to one law: the law of money, the law of power” (DIE BÜRGSCHAFT).


🎶 Ten exceptional singing actors have been selected as finalists in the 2026 Lenya Competition! The 28th annual Lenya Competition will take place on May 9th at Kilbourn Hall in Rochester, NY, and feature top prizes of $25,000, $20,000, and $15,000, as well as discretionary prizes at the $6000 level. Judges will be Olivier Award nominee and 2010 Lenya Competition prizewinner , Tony Award-winning conductor and director , and two-time Tony Award-winning composer .

Read our full April E-News at the link in our bio!

📣 Weill’s DER SILBERSEE at has received glowing reviews!Weill’s final work to be premiered in Germany is making a comeb...
03/24/2026

📣 Weill’s DER SILBERSEE at has received glowing reviews!

Weill’s final work to be premiered in Germany is making a comeback. In recent years, a new critical edition of the music has aided a number of highly successful European productions of DER SILBERSEE, which Weill created in 1932 in collaboration with playwright Georg Kaiser.

Now, a landmark new production by Chicago Opera Theater has brought the work to the United States for the first time since 1990!

Explore more: https://www.kwf.org/news/a-neglected-weill-masterpiece-der-silbersee-impresses-in-chicago/ 🎵

📸:

Weill’s THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS is having a moment in the spotlight, with not one but TWO recent recordings: 🎵 featuring ...
03/05/2026

Weill’s THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS is having a moment in the spotlight, with not one but TWO recent recordings:
 
🎵 featuring Weill champions HJ Gruber and .giunta, and the “version for fifteen players” prepared by Gruber and Christian Muthspiel.

🎵 also featuring HK Gruber and .giunta, using Weill’s original orchestration.
 
THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS is a ballet chanté in nine scenes, with lyrics by frequent Weill collaborator Bertholt Brecht, and choreography by George Balanchine. It premiered in Paris in 1933 with Lotte Lenya in the role of Anna I. 
 
The story follows Anna I (who sings) and Anna II (who dances) who are two facets of one personality. They travel to seven American towns to make enough money to build a house on the banks of the Mississippi. In each city, they encounter a different deadly sin, and Anna I (the practical side) rebukes Anna II (the artistic side) for engaging in sinful behavior–that is, behavior which hinders the accumulation of wealth.
 
Read more about the new recording at the link in our bio! 🎉🎶

Images:
 
1. Wallis Giunta as Anna I in Opera North’s 2021 production | Photo: Tristram Kenton
 
2. Anna II (Tilly Losch) and Anna I (Lotte Lenya) are two sides of the same personality in the premiere of ballet chanté Die sieben Todsünden; Paris, Les Ballets, 1933
 
3. Shelley Eva Haden (Anna II) and Wallis Giunta (Anna I) in The Seven Deadly Sins; Opera North, 2021 | Photo: Tristram Kenton
 
4. Lotte Lenya (Anna I) with Karen von Aroldingen (Anna II) in the German stage premiere of Die sieben Todsünden, 1960
 

“The greatest danger to the human race is indifference. People sleep and wake and eat and work and listen to the radio a...
03/02/2026

“The greatest danger to the human race is indifference. People sleep and wake and eat and work and listen to the radio and go to sleep again and they are much too ready to forget what a precious thing it is to be able to live their own lives and they don’t know what they would lose if their way of life would be destroyed.

If we could show on the stage what it really means to be free and if we could show it in simple terms so that it can reach everybody, then we would really do our share to solve the problems this country is faced with.” — Kurt Weill, born 2 March 1900.

Happy 126th Birthday to Kurt Weill! 🎵

Source: Interview with Kurt Weill, radio program broadcast March 9, 1941 on NBC Blue Network. Transcribed from audiocassette held by the Weill-Lenya Research Center, Ser.122/3.

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