Lotte Lenya

Lotte Lenya was a Tony Award-winning celebrity/singer who appeared primarily on stage from your 1920s towards the ’70s, even though also saving and building occasional performances on film, radio, and tv. She was carefully from the music of her hubby, composer Kurt Weill, often showing up in his stage functions and taking part in recordings of his music. Even more broadly, she was discovered using the interwar period in Germany, which led, for instance, to her casting in the Broadway musical Cabaret. Her Tony Award, nevertheless, came on her behalf 1954 appearance in Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, a present where she also have been highlighted when it premiered in Germany in 1928. Lenya was created Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer in Vienna on Oct 18, 1898. She uncovered a pastime in performing and dancing as soon as age five, when she performed within a community circus. In 1913, she transferred to Zurich and started acquiring ballet lessons and performing. She transferred to Berlin in 1921. She and Weill wedded on January 28, 1926. On July 17, 1927, she made an appearance in Mahagonny Songspiel, his configurations of poems by Bertolt Brecht, in Baden-Baden. (The music cycle later on was extended into an opera, Rise and Fall of the town of Mahagonny.) On August 31, 1928, she got a supporting part in The Threepenny Opera when it opened up in Berlin. She repeated her efficiency on a studio room solid recording manufactured in Dec 1930 and in the film edition released in Feb 1931. Although she didn’t perform in the Brecht/Weill musical Content End, which opened up in Berlin on Sept 2, 1929, she documented tracks from it. She do come in the Berlin creation of Rise and Fall of the town of Mahagonny, which opened up Dec 21, 1931. Lenya remaining Germany using the onset from the Nazi dictatorship. Located in Paris, she documented tracks from Weill’s 1933 musical play The Metallic Lake and starred in the Brecht/Weill ballet The Seven Fatal Sins, which opened up on June 7, 1933. She and Weill sailed towards the U.S. in Sept 1935, nominally in order that he can work for the Biblical pageant The Eternal Street, to become produced in NY and where she was to truly have a part; actually, both ultimately became Americans. The show opened up on January 7, 1937, on the Manhattan Opera Home for a operate of 153 shows. Lenya produced her debut being a nightclub vocalist at Le Ruban Bleu in NY, beginning on Apr 7, 1938. On Oct 22, 1941, she opened up in the play Candle in the Blowing wind on Broadway. It went 95 shows. In 1943, she was contracted by Bost Information and documented the record Six Music by Kurt Weill, comprising three 78s. She acquired her next function in another of her husband’s displays when she starred in the operetta The Firebrand of Florence, which opened up on Broadway on March 22, 1945, but was failing, running just 43 shows. Weill passed away after a coronary attack on Apr 3, 1950. Lenya came back to Broadway in the play Barefoot in Athens, which opened up on Oct 31, 1951, but went only 30 shows. A far more significant appearance is at a fresh English-language adaptation from the Threepenny Opera by Marc Blitzstein performed like a concert at Brandeis College or university on June 13, 1952. The efficiency resulted in a full-fledged stage revival that opened up Off-Broadway on March 10, 1954, and became a considerable hit, operating until Dec 1961. Lenya made an appearance in the display for just two years; sang over the ensemble album; and gained the 1956 Tony Prize for best highlighted actress within a musical. The renown Lenya attained on her behalf appearance in The Threepenny Opera allowed her to set up agreements with Columbia Information (for the U.S.) and Philips Information (for European countries) for some brand-new recordings of Weill music to be produced in Germany and in the German vocabulary. The initial was a single record, Lotte Lenya Sings Berlin Theater Music by Kurt Weill, released in November 1955. She after that made a documenting from the Seven Lethal Sins released in March 1957, accompanied by a studio room ensemble documenting of Rise and Fall of the town of Mahagonny released in 1958. She agreed upon another agreement with Columbia to create an record of Weill’s Broadway music and surfaced from a documenting studio room with Sept Song and Additional American Theatre Tunes of Kurt Weill, released in Feb 1958. Back Germany, she participated inside a studio room solid recording from the Threepenny Opera released later on in 1958. With this, she had finished the majority of her latter-day recordings of Weill’s function, but she produced one more recording for Columbia and Philips, documenting the tracks from Happy Result in July 1960. Afterwards in 1960, Lenya visited London, where she acted in her initial film in 30 years, The Roman Springtime of Mrs. Rock, which brought her an Academy Prize nomination for greatest supporting celebrity. (Although she didn’t positively pursue film performing, she was ensemble in some more movies through the rest of her profession, showing up in From Russia with Like [1964], The Visit [1969], and Semi-Tough [1977].) She came back to the brand new York stage in the Off-Broadway revue Brecht about Brecht, which opened up January 3, 1962. It went over 200 shows, with Columbia documenting a solid album. Carrying on her stage support of Weill’s lyric partner, she starred inside a creation of Brecht’s play Mom Courage in June and July 1965 in Recklinghausen, Germany. Lenya came back to Broadway in Cabaret, a musical occur Weimar Germany and predicated on the tales of Christopher Isherwood, which opened up on November 20, 1966. It had been a big success, working 1,165 shows, many of them offering Lenya, who gained a Tony nomination for greatest actress and made an appearance on the solid album. Her last theatrical appearance was included with another operate in The Threepenny Opera at Florida Condition University or college in Tallahassee in Apr 1972. She passed away of ovarian malignancy in NY on November 27, 1981, at age group 83.