38 2014 Program Notes, Book 9
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
and published privately by Lenya in 1955.
The
Seven
Deadly
Sins
was first seen in
America on December 4, 1958 in a New York City Ballet production choreographed
by Balanchine and sung by Lenya; W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman provided a
new English translation. The opera was not presented in Germany until 1960.
The
Seven Deadly
Sins
has since enjoyed a steady representation in performances and
recordings, and has come in recent years to be regarded as one the finest products of
the Weill-Brecht collaboration.
The
Seven Deadly
Sins
sardonically traces the progress of two sisters — Anna I
(the singer) and Anna II (the dancer) — as they journey from their home in Louisiana
to seek their fortune in Memphis, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore and
San Francisco, confronting one of the seven deadly sins in each location over a like
number of years. In his 1967 study of Brecht, Fredric Ewen outlined the plot: “Two
sisters (actually two facets of one person), Anna I and Anna II, one representing the
self-repression and self-denial necessary for success in modern society; the other
representing the natural instincts and healthy needs and responses, set out to earn
money to enable their family in Louisiana to build a house. Anna II is tempted to give
way to sins, that is, her natural desires:
Sloth
(she likes to sleep);
Anger
(she resents
injustice);
Gluttony
(she doesn’t like to starve herself);
Pride
(she doesn’t want to strip-
tease); and
Lust
(she falls in love). As an ‘entertainer,’ she does succeed in overcoming
her natural impulses, and her venture is crowned with monetary rewards.” The last
two sins —
Covetousness
and
Envy
— are entrusted respectively to the Family and to
Anna, who tries to purge such feelings in herself.
Weill arranged
The Seven Deadly Sins
as a series of seven short scenes surrounded
by a
Prologue
and an
Epilogue
whose musical style achieves a careful integration of
the elements of German cabaret and popular songs with those of traditional opera.
Anna introduces herself in the
Prologue
and declares her intention of getting rich,
sending the money home to Louisiana to build a house for the family, and returning
there after seven years to live. In a furious interpretation of
Sloth
, the family (a male
quartet in which the bass, rather grotesquely, is assigned the part of the mother) frets
that their daughter will succumb to her innate laziness; the movement culminates in a
mock-chorale that returns in various transformations throughout the opera. Anna, to
the accompaniment of a cynical waltz, defeats
Pride
in the next scene, and works as
a nightclub dancer in Memphis. Against the background of appropriately turbulent
music, the Family, in
Anger
, derides Anna for not sending home enough money, while
the girl herself has moved to Los Angeles, where she learns that self-control produces
better results than petulance. The Family gives an
a cappella
report that Anna, in
Baltimore, has conquered
Gluttony
by signing a contract as a precisely monitored
showgirl forbidding her “ever eating when or what she likes to eat.” On to Boston,
where Anna decides that her
Lust
for a poor, young lover must be subdued in favor
of the greater gain available from the attentions of an older and better-heeled suitor.
Anna, in Baltimore, nears the top of her profession, and the Family warns her, to the
strains of a powerfully demonic waltz, against succumbing to the grasping temptations
of
Covetousness
. Anna overcomes the sin of
Envy
of those enjoying the easy life in San
Francisco before making a weary return home to Louisiana in the
Epilogue
.
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