Part of the Opus Amadeus Chamber Music Festival, mounted since 2012 by Artisan. Arias by Handel, Mozart, the Brazilian composer Antonio Carlos Gomes (1836–96), Bizet, Puccini, the American musical theatre composer and theatrical producer Mitch Leigh (1928–2014), and Kurt Weill (1900–50), a German-Jewish composer who fled Germany for the United States in 1933.
Joe Mabel, writing on the ‘weillproject’ website, has this to say about Weill’s Youkali, one of the songs that is to be performed: ‘Having escaped from Nazi Germany, Weill attempted rather successfully during his roughly two years in Paris to write songs that would gain the same sort of popularity with the French public as he had achieved with the more progressive portion of the German public in the era of the Weimar Republic: hence the distinctly French flavour of this gorgeous Euro-tango.’
Bass-baritone Suat Arıkan and soprano Ceren Aydın will be accompanied on the piano by Lena Şenol.
Issue 67, December 2024
Beauty in the Wilderness
