Kurt Weill - Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (The Tsar has his Photograph Taken)

Kurt WEILL (1900-1950)

Der Zar lässt sich photographieren Op.21

(The Tsar has his Photograph Taken)

Barry McDaniel (baritone), Carla Pohl (soprano), Thomas Lehrberger (tenor), Ulla Tocha (vocals), Marita Napier (soprano), Heinz Kruse (vocals), Hilke Helling (vocals), Mario Brell (vocals), Hans Franzen (bass)

Cologne Radio Chorus, Cologne Radio Orchestra, 

Jan Latham-Koenig

Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (The Tsar Has his Photograph Taken') is an opera buffa in one act by Kurt Weill, op. 21. The German libretto was written by Georg Kaiser, and Weill composed the music in 1927. It is a Zeitoper, a genre of music theatre which used contemporary settings and characters, satiric plots which often include technology and machinery. Musically the Zeitoper genre tends to be eclectic and borrow from Jazz. The genre has practically disappeared from the world's opera houses. Historically the Zeitoper came to an abrupt end with the Nazi period, and after the war the cultureal institutions were perhaps hesitant to return to the lighter, often decadent and comic operas written before the holocaust changed the artistic perspective. This conjecture is supported by the statistical fact that of all of Weill's, Schönberg's, Hindemith's and Krenek's works - it is these very shorter, satirical Zeitoper works that are no longer performed

Complete booklet including libretto scanned