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Lotte
Lenya (1898-1951) was born Karoline Wilhelmine Blamauer
in Austria, became a streetwalker by the age of 13, and then began her
training as a dancer in Switzerland. She moved to Berlin in 1922
after some acting lessons, where she appeared in comprimario roles in a
few operettas before meeting and marrying composer Kurt Weill.
She played Jessie in Brecht & Weill's Mahagonny Songspiel
at the Baden-Baden Festival in 1927, her untrained voice setting her
apart from the opera singers in the cast. Then she was cast in the
role of Jenny for the world-premičre production of Brecht & Weill's
Die Dreigroschenoper ("The Threepenny Opera") in
Berlin in 1928. Weill was furious to discover that her name had
been mistakenly omitted from the opening night program, but she calmed
him, saying, "Tomorrow they will all know who I am." And
they did: she went on to be the toast of the Berlin stage. After
singing the role of Jenny in a cabaret-style staging of Brecht &
Weill's Epic opera Die Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny ("The
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny"), she, Brecht, and
Weill were forced to flee Berlin to escape Nazi persecution. They
arrived in Paris, where she sang Anna I in the world-premiere of a ballet-chanté by
Weill and Brecht, called Die Sieben Todsünden ("The
Seven Deadly Sins"). After moving to New York City with Weill
in 1935, she played Miriam in Franz Werfel's biblical epic The
Eternal Road (1937), sang at the fashionable nightclub Le Ruban
Bleu, and toured with Helen Hayes in Maxwell Anderson's A Candle in
the Wind (1942). She was miscast as the Duchess in Weill's
operetta The Firebrand of Florence (1945), and received poor
notices, but after Weill's death in 1950, Lenya created a role in
Anderson's play Barefoot in Athens (1951) on Broadway
before becoming the prime interpreter of Weill's body of work. She
reprised her role as Jenny in Marc Blitzstein's English-language
adaptation of The Threepenny Opera (1954) at the off-Broadway
Theatre de Lys, in a production which won her a Tony Award.
Lenya's career was revived in the 1960s when she played Fraulein
Schneider in the original Broadway production of Cabaret
(1968), Rosa Klebb in the 007 thriller From Russia,
With Love, and the Contessa in Tennessee Williams' The Roman
Spring of Mrs. Stone, which earned her an Oscar nomination.
She died of cancer on November 27th, 1981, but on her death-bed she
passed on the Kurt Weill torch to Teresa Stratas during her last
coherent moments. |
