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[MUSIC REVIEW] Weill's Mahagonny at Tanglewood
8.10.08
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER
RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY
by Kurt Weill
Opera in three acts
Original German text and lyrics by Bertolt Brecht
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER VOCAL FELLOWS
TANGLEWOOD MUSIC CENTER ORCHESTRA
by Seth Rogovoy
(Lenox, Mass., August 10, 2008) -- The muddled production of Kurt Weill's RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY in the Theatre at Tanglewood this weekend followed the muddled opera itself. Time hasn't been kind to the work, especially to Bertolt Brecht's book, which perhaps at one time was revolutionary, but nowadays seems as embarrassingly didactic and dogmatic as the Sixties musical HAIR, which likewise in its own day was seen as paradigm-shifting, but hasn't stood the test of time.
The staging at Tanglewood had a lot going for it. The costumes and set design were intriguing, if somewhat inconsistent. And although some of the stagework was innovative, such as a prostitute and johns silhouetted in a kind of lifesize lightbox, and clever use made of panels, signs, and projections, these were also inconsistent and not fully rendered.
The voices, while all engaging and virtuosic, were wildly inconsistent. Weill's Mahagonny exists in a vague place somewhere between opera and musical theater (and some other kind of music-theater unique to Brecht-Weill), and the voices matched that place, with some coming from the former (Rebecca Jo Loeb's Jenny and Christin Marie Hill's Leocadia Begbick in particular) and sung without verbal recognition, and some from the latter (Steven Ebel's Jimmy Mahoney, who had to carry the burden of the story on his shoulders).
Fortunately, if one ignored all this and just let Weill's score wash over a listener, it was a wonderful time, as Weill's score crossed boundaries of classical, jazz, folk, and ethnic music to achieve a singular style of music, instantly recognizable as Kurt Weill, and performed magnificently by the Tanglewood Music Center Orchestra.
That in and of itself was almost worth the price of the ticket.
Seth Rogovoy is Berkshire Living's editor-in-chief and award-winning music critic.
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