Word: lehrman
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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CLIFFORD WOODWORTH as Mr. Peachum seems to understand Brecht better, and his operatic voice adds to his performance. It was a shame to see him have to glance up at the conductor (Paul D. Lehrman) in confusion as the musical ensemble fell apart during the finale to Act I. From the opening bars of the overture, Lehrman takes the score at a gallop. He doesn't give the music the time it needs to fester, to spread its fumes; more importantly, the singers couldn't keep up with the pace. (If you want to hear Weill's music...
Stephen J. Lehrman...
Stephen J. Lehrman...
...adapting Days of the Commune in "Cantata" form, Lehrman included the four songs by Hans Eisler which Brecht originally wrote into the texture of his play. But hoping to make Brecht's uncompromising moral preachments more palatable to American audiences, whose effete musical diet dates from the Ziegfeld Follies, not Wagner, Lehrman has inserted six more songs by Eisler and the Communist anthem "Internationale" to make Commune more fully music-drama ( Theater mit Musik ). He justifies the increased emphasis on music not solely as a concession to American sensibility, but as the "use of a Wagnerian technique to make...
...whole, as a success-if only for this robust fusion of music and dramatic spectacle. In Sanders, the slide-show of period engravings and photographs should make the mise en scene more convincing-and, with a little more coordination of scene changes, less awkward. In any event, Brecht, Eisler, Lehrman and his company merit the whole University's attention. Tonight may be a sequel to the teach-in. It may be something more...