The Silver Lake – A Winter’s Tale

Best known for his brilliant and bitter-sweet music theatre collaborations with Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill was a serious composer with deep social convictions. The Silver Lake – A Winter’s Tale (Der Silbersee), his last work in Germany, was a collaboration with the poetic playwright Georg Kaiser. It was shut down by the Nazi authorities in 1933, and left unperformed for years. For many people, it is his masterpiece. In numbers like ‘The Ballad of Caesar’s Death’ and ‘The Song of the Lottery Ticket Seller’, there is sharp satire of the right, the left and the national socialist. But this is a piece about those who are left behind in the fighting for position – the poor man driven to steal a pineapple, the poor relation who is passed from house to house, the policeman with principles, the starving people who at the very beginning of the show are busy burying Hunger itself. At its heart are a thief, a policeman, and a girl called Fennimore. Around them is a bizarre gallery of opportunists, thugs and aristocrats. The three lovable characters try to survive a “winter’s tale” that could not be more appropriate to modern Britain.