Die Burgschaft (review)

Die Bürgschaft. Kurt Weill
Johann Mattes: Frederick Burchinal	Der Kommissar: John Daniecki
Anna Mattes: Margaret Thompson	Three creditors: Peter Lurié, Lawrence Craig,
David Orth: Dale Travis	Herbert Perry
Jakob Orth: Joel Sorensen	Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra
Luise Mattes: Ann Panagulias	Westminster Choir
Alto solo: Katherine Ciesinski	Julius Rudel, conductor
Der Richter: Enrico di Giuseppe	EMI Classics 7243 5 56976 2 (2 CDs)
Der Mann: Mark Duffin

For a Jewish composer in Germany, 1932 was not an ideal time to premiere a new opera on the importance of bonding and the need for covenants to protect the human community. Yet Kurt Weill was able to secure at least two productions of his tragic opera, Die Bürgschaft, which translates imprecisely as "the bond," "the covenant," or "the guarantee," beginning in Berlin in March 1932 and later at Düsseldorf, before the Nazi takeover put an abrupt end to Weill's musical career in Germany. Except for a few performances in Brno in 1935 and a few radio performances, Die Bürgschaft slumbered in obscurity until its revival at the Spoleto Festival in South Carolina in 1999. It was from that production that the CD is taken, and it represents the very first recording of a largely ignored but pivotal work from Weill's amazing career. If this release does not tap the full potential of the opera, it certainly fills a void in the recorded legacy of a great composer, and it should inspire future productions of the work.

Viewed from the perspective of Weill's German career, the opera most closely resembles Der Jasager and points back to the Marxist didacticism of Weill's earlier collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. Yet Weill had already ended the collaborations with Brecht, which had produced Die Dreigroschenoper and Happy End, no doubt because Weill reacted against the heavy didacticism of Brechtian texts like Die Massnahme (The Measures Taken) or because Brecht's eccentric Marxism had grown unappealing. On first hearing, the opera seems most reminiscent of one of Brecht's and Weill's happiest collaborations, Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins), with its aggressive rhythms and restless ostinato underpinnings, although Caspar Neher's libretto utterly lacks the sardonic humor of Brecht's witty text for Sins. Weill's previous full opera, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, written in collaboration with Brecht, seems ideally suited to the two men's talents, and Brecht's satiric attack on heartless, capitalist America had the unintended effect of letting Weill show great musical affection for his future homeland. Mahagonny possesses three elements clearly lacking in Die Bürgschaft—a witty libretto by Brecht, a plum role for Lotte Lenya, and an instantly popular tune like "Moon of Alabama." (The item closest in spirit to the Alabama Song in the new opera is the boozy trio for the highwaymen, "Auch in Lande Urb natürlich," which with more exposure might have earned a spot on the thirties' pop charts.)

Viewed from the perspective of Weill's American career, Die Bürgschaft anticipates much of the musical spirit of Street Scene, with which it shares the themes of urban loneliness and strained parent-child relationships and even a fondness for long-suffering wives named Anna. While Anna Mattes in Bürgschaft pines for her lost daughter and endures her husband's growing moral obtuseness, Anna Maurrant in Street Scene suffers the ultimate penalty in spousal abuse for having had an adulterous relationship. The lost-child motif will lead eventually to the doomed youth in Weill's American folk opera, Down in the Valley, and the white and black doomed sons in Weill's last completed musical, Lost in the Stars. In some ways Bürgschaft seems closest in spirit to Weill's first American musical, Johnny Johnson; the two works share disillusioned main characters and unsparing depictions of the harsh effects of war on decent people, as well as a certain earnestness of tone that doesn't conform to the popular perception of Weill's characteristic...