Word: lenya
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Stratas met Lenya during the rehearsals for Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at the Met in 1979. At first Lenya made Stratas nervous; she sensed the older woman's resentment at being supplanted in one of her roles. "It was hard for me to see that shock of red hair and that stern face in the empty house," remembers Stratas. "She was Jenny and I thought that I was hopeless." Only later, as Lenya was dying, did Stratas learn that her performance had deeply affected her colleague-so much so that Lenya gave...
DIED. Lotte Lenya, 83, raspy-voiced, Austrian-born musical actress best known for performing, and later resuscitating, works of Composer Kurt Weill, her first husband; of cancer; in Manhattan. Lenya's signature role, which she premiered in Weimar Berlin, was the prostitute Jenny in Bertolt Brecht and Weill's The Threepenny Opera. The Weills fled Nazism for the U.S. and, especially after Weill's death in 1950, Lenya renewed her career on the Broadway stage (Cabaret) and in spoofy films (From Russia With Love). Said Music Critic Harold Schonberg: "She can put into a song an intensity...
Macheath, always the gentleman, marries Peachum's daughter Polly in a stable; when Peachum finds out he vows to have Macheath hanged. He finally catches the man-about-town at his weekly appointment with his whore, Jenny. This, of course, is the role Lotte Lenya made famous, and it's central to the show. Marylou Ledden plays the part with sense--she catches the world-weariness in Brecht better than anyone else in the cast. But her inadequate singing must be the reason the director, Harvey Seifter, gives Jenny's big number, "Pirate Jenny," to Polly Peachum (Ann Titolo) instead...
...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 in a really atmospheric performance, pick up the old Berlin recording on Odyssey Records. It's in German, but it's got Lotte Lenya and it's cheap...
...with the New York City Ballet in a new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's The Seven Deadly Sins. Celebrated Choreographer George Balanchine chose her to play the lead role of the peripatetic showgirl Annie, a part created in 1933 by Weill's widow Lotte Lenya. Why? "She has a good voice and red hair." Says Bette: "It's a dream come true. Next year, Firebird...