Ernest Newman

This 1928 recording–with several cuts, particularly in the last act, which is cut in half–is a great curiosity. (As a bonus, the third CD, after the abbreviated last act, contains about 40 minutes of the last act in an excellent 1927 performance starring Walter Widdop and Gota Ljungberg and a brief but enlightening discussion of Wagner's leitmotifs and their uses by scholar Ernest Newman.) The two leads, Gunnar Graarud as Tristan and Nanny Larsen-Todsen as Isolde, are more lyric-voiced singers than we're used to in this music, and so the performance seems somehow more intimate (I doubt they would have been as effective in the theater as they are on this recording). Anny Helm is a thrilling Brangaene, and the others are good.

Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht - Die Dreigroschenoper / Songs & Chansons - The Original 1930 Recordings
Marlene Dietrich - Lotte Lenya - Kurt Gerron - Erich Ponto
EAC+LOG+CUE | FLAC: 127 MB | Full Artwork | 5% Recovery Info
Label/Cat#: Teldec # 9031-72025-2 | Country/Year: Germany 1990, 1931
Genre: Classical, Pop | Style: Early 20th Century, Opera, Chanson

…The Threepenny Opera was first performed at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin in 1928. Despite an initially poor reception, it became a great success, playing 400 times in the next two years. The performance was a springboard for one of the best known interpreters of Brecht and Weill's work, Lotte Lenya, who was married to Weill…