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LoveMusik
''LoveMusik'' is a musical written by Alfred Uhry, using a selection of music by Kurt Weill. The story explores the romance and lives of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, based on ''Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya'', edited and translated by Lys Symonette and Kim H. Kowalke. Harold Prince had read ''Speak Low'' and suggested the idea for a musical to Uhry. Uhry and Prince worked on ''LoveMusik'' for four years to develop it into a stage work. The story spans over 25 years, from the first meeting of Lenya and Weill as struggling young artists, to their popularity in Europe and America, to Weill's death from a heart attack at age 50. Productions The musical was produced on Broadway as a limited run by the Manhattan Theatre Club at the Biltmore Theatre beginning previews on April 12, 2007, opening on May 3, 2007, and closing on June 24, 2007. The show was directed by Harold Prince with musical staging by Patricia Birch and starred Michael Cerveris ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Cerveris
Michael Cerveris (born November 6, 1960) is an American actor, singer, and guitarist. He has performed in many stage musicals and plays, including several Stephen Sondheim musicals: ''Assassins'', ''Sweeney Todd'', '' Road Show'', and '' Passion''. In 2004, Cerveris won the Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Musical for ''Assassins'' as John Wilkes Booth. In 2015, he won his second Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for ''Fun Home'' as Bruce Bechdel. He was called, by ''Playbill.com'', "arguably the most versatile leading man on Broadway", playing roles from "Shakespeare's Romeo to ''The Who's Tommy'', from the German transsexual rock diva Hedwig in '' Hedwig and the Angry Inch'' to the homicidal title character of Sondheim's ''Sweeney Todd''.""About Michael Cerveris" MasterWorksBroadway.com, accessed March 13, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erik Liberman
Erik Liberman is an American actor, author, and director. Early life and education Liberman was born in Miami, the son of social worker Marsha and Havana-born vision scientist and author Jacob. He attended New World School of the Arts, where he became a YoungArts winner and was later named Alumnus of the Year. After high school, he trained at London's Complicité and Royal National Theatre, The Groundlings, Ann Reinking's Broadway Theatre Project, and École Philippe Gaulier in France. He cites Maureen Stapleton and Judi Dench as influences. Stage career Liberman has originated roles in Broadway productions including '' War Paint'', as Revlon founder Charles Revson opposite Patti LuPone and Christine Ebersole, directed by Michael Greif, and in Alfred Uhry's ''LoveMusik'' with Donna Murphy and Michael Cerveris, directed by Harold Prince. ''LoveMusik'' was nominated for four Tony Awards and twelve Drama Desk Awards, including Best Musical, and both shows issued original cast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donna Murphy
Donna Murphy (born March 7, 1959) is an American actress, best known for her work in musical theater. A five-time Tony Award nominee, she has twice won the Tony for Best Actress in a Musical: for her role as Fosca in '' Passion'' (1994–1995) and as Anna Leonowens'' in The King and I'' (1996–1997). She was also nominated for her roles as Ruth Sherwood in ''Wonderful Town'' (2003), Lotte Lenya in ''LoveMusik'' (2007) and Bubbie/Raisel in ''The People in the Picture'' (2011). Murphy made her Broadway debut as a replacement in the 1979 musical ''They're Playing Our Song''. Her other stage credits include the original off-Broadway productions of ''Song of Singapore'' (1991) and '' Hello Again'' (1993), as well as the alternate to Bette Midler as the title character in a Broadway revival of '' Hello, Dolly!'' (2017–2018). In 1997, she won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in a Children's Special for her role in ''Someone Had to be Benny'', an episode of the HBO ser ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Uhry
Alfred Fox Uhry (born December 3, 1936) is an American playwright and screenwriter. He has received an Academy Award, two Tony Awards and the 1988 Pulitzer Prize for dramatic writing for ''Driving Miss Daisy''. He is a member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Early life Uhry was born in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of Alene (Fox), a social worker, and Ralph K. Uhry, a furniture designer and artist. He was born into a German Jewish family with one sister, the author Ann Uhry Abrams. Uhry graduated from Druid Hills High School in 1954 and went on to graduate from Brown University in 1958 Harrison, Leah R"Real Life Inspired Uhry's Midlife Success"''Jewish Times'', December 1, 2015 where he wrote two original musicals with Brownbrokers. Druid Hills High School's Uhry Theater is named in honor of Uhry. During his first years in New York City, learning the craft of lyric-writing, Uhry received a stipend from Frank Loesser; after his eventual success, Uhry often praised Loesser's gen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harold Prince
Harold Smith Prince (born Harold Smith; January 30, 1928 – July 31, 2019), commonly known as Hal Prince, was an American theatre director and producer known for his work in musical theatre. One of the foremost figures in 20th century American theatre, Prince became associated throughout his career with many of the most noteworthy musicals in Broadway history, including ''West Side Story'', ''Fiddler on the Roof'', ''Cabaret'', ''Sweeney Todd'', and ''Phantom of the Opera'', the longest running show in Broadway history. Many of his productions broke new ground for musical theater, expanding the possibilities of the form by incorporating more serious and political subjects, such as Nazism (''Cabaret''), the difficulties of marriage (''Company''), and the forcible opening of 19th-century Japan (''Pacific Overtures''). Over the span of his career, he garnered 21 Tony Awards, including eight for directing, eight for producing the year's Best Musical, two as Best Producer of a Mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, ''The Threepenny Opera'', which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose,Kurt Weill Cjschuler.net. Retrieved on August 22, 2011. ''''. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
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David Pittu
David Jonathan Pittu ( ro, Pitu; born April 4, 1967) is an American actor, writer and director. Early life Pittu was born and grew up in Fairfield, Connecticut where, as a high school senior, he was a finalist in the NFAA's Arts Recognition Talent Search in Drama. He graduated from New York University 's Tisch School of the Arts in 1989. Career Pittu's theater work includes plays and musicals, and he has received two Tony Award nominations. He was nominated for the 2007 Best Featured Actor in a Musical for playing Bertolt Brecht in Harold Prince's ''LoveMusik'' and for the 2008 Best Featured Actor in a Play for his multiple-role turn in the Mark Twain comedy ''Is He Dead?'' adapted by David Ives and directed by Michael Blakemore. He received the Daryl Roth 2010 Creative Spirit Award. He received the 2009 St. Clair Bayfield Award for his performance in ''Twelfth Night'' at the Delacorte Theatre in 2009, directed by Daniel Sullivan. Also under Sullivan's direction, he played Pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patricia Birch
Patricia Birch (born October 16, 1934) is an American dancer, choreographer, film director, and theatre director. Early life Born in Englewood, New Jersey, Birch began her career as a dancer in Broadway musicals, including ''Brigadoon (musical), Brigadoon'', ''Goldilocks (musical), Goldilocks'', and ''West Side Story (musical), West Side Story'' (playing Anybodys). She has directed and choreographed music videos for Cyndi Lauper, The Rolling Stones, and Carly Simon. She earned Emmy Awards for her direction of the television specials ''Natalie Cole: Unforgettable'' and ''Celebrating George Gershwin, Gershwin'' and, in collaboration with Michael Tilson Thomas, she staged the concert version of ''On the Town (musical), On the Town'' performed by both the London Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony. She spent six years staging numbers for ''Saturday Night Live''. In the 1960s, she taught dance at the Juilliard School's pre-college division in New York City. She performed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lotte Lenya
Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her first husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language cinema, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a jaded aristocrat in '' The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone'' (1961). She also played the murderous and sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie '' From Russia with Love'' (1963). Early career In 1922, Lenya was seen by her future husband, German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill, during an audition for his first stage score ''Zaubernacht'', but because of his position behind the piano, she did not see him. She was cast, but owing to her loyalty to her voice coach, she declined the role. She accepted the part of Jenny in the first performance of ''The Threepenny Opera'' (''Die Dreigrosche ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan Theatre Club
Manhattan Theatre Club (MTC) is a theatre company located in New York City, affiliated with the League of Resident Theatres. Under the leadership of Artistic Director Lynne Meadow and Executive Producer Barry Grove, Manhattan Theatre Club has grown since its founding in 1970 from an Off-Off Broadway showcase into one of the country's most acclaimed theatre organizations. MTC's many awards include 19 Tony Awards,Manhattan Theatre Club List of Awards Won by MTC, accessed August 18, 2015. six , 48 and 32 |
Knickerbocker Holiday
''Knickerbocker Holiday'' is a 1938 musical written by Kurt Weill (music) and Maxwell Anderson (book and lyrics); based loosely on Washington Irving's ''Knickerbocker's History of New York'' about life in 17th-century New Netherland (old New York). The musical numbers include "September Song", now considered a pop standard. History ''Knickerbocker Holiday'' is both a romantic comedy and a thinly veiled allegory equating the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt with fascism. (A Roosevelt ancestor is one of the characters on the corrupt New Amsterdam council in the play.) Playwright Anderson believed that government was necessary in society, but that it must always be watched because it is swayed by the self-interests of those in power. He saw FDR's New Deal as an American version of the corporatism and concentration of political power which had given rise to Nazism and Stalinism. Plot summary The action is narrated by 19th-century author Washington Irving, who announces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Street Scene (opera)
''Street Scene'' is an American opera by Kurt Weill (music), Langston Hughes (lyrics), and Elmer Rice (book). Written in 1946 and premiered in Philadelphia that year, ''Street Scene'' is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play of the same name by Rice. It was Weill who referred to the piece as an "American opera", intending it as a groundbreaking synthesis of European traditional opera and American musical theater. He received the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score for his work, after the Broadway premiere in 1947. Considered far more an opera than a musical, ''Street Scene'' is regularly produced by professional opera companies and has never been revived on Broadway. Musically and culturally, even dramatically, the work inhabits the mid-ground between Weill's ''Threepenny Opera'' (1928) and Leonard Bernstein's ''West Side Story'' (1957). The score contains operatic arias and ensembles, some of them, such as Anna Maurrant's "Somehow I Never Could Believe" and Fran ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
