Der Kuhhandel
Encyclopedia
Der Kuhhandel is an operetta
by Kurt Weill
. The German libretto was written by Robert Vambery.
, met in Paris
in 1933 and began work on the operetta in 1934. Following the completion of the libretto, attempts to interest theatre managers in Paris and Zürich
in staging the operetta proved abortive, and Weill turned to other projects, leaving most of the musical numbers complete but unorchestrated.
The German word Kuhhandel means "cattle trading". In German slang of the 1930s it referred to manoeuverings by politicians.
(book) and Desmond Carter (lyrics) on a three-act English-language musical comedy version of the operetta called A Kingdom for a Cow. This premiered on 28 June 1935 at the Savoy Theatre
, London
, under the baton of Muir Matheson. It achieved a critical success but failed at the box-office, running for only two weeks.
In 1978, Lys Symonette, Weill's friend and assistant, prepared a reconstruction of the original two-act operetta, and this was published by Schott Musik in 1981. This version was first performed in concert in Düsseldorf
on 22 March 1990 (conductor: Jan Latham Koenig
) and on stage at the Deutsch-Sorbisches Volkstheater, Bautzen
(conductor: Dieter Kempe, director Wolfgang Poch) in 1994.
The United States
première, in an English-language version by Jeremy Sams
, took place on 11 April 2000 at the Juilliard School
(conductor, Randall Behr, director Frank Corsaro
). The first performance in Great Britain
of the Symonette version was given by Opera North
on 30 March 2006, at the Alhambra Theatre
, Bradford
. The conductor was Jim Holmes and the director was David Pountney
, who also collaborated with Sams on a revised translation. This production was first seen (in German) at the Kornmarkttheater, Bregenz
, on 13 August 2004.
As Santa Maria is short of money, Mendez and Ximenez introduce a new tax to pay for the weapons. Juan cannot pay, his cow is impounded and the wedding with Juanita is called off. Juan works as a stevedore to earn enough money to get the cow back, but a second attempt at a wedding is again foiled by the impounding of the cow. This is because a second tax has had to be imposed at the behest of the war-mongering General Conchas, who plans manoeuvres on the border with Ucqua. Juan is called up into the army, and, to earn money for a replacement cow, Juanita goes into the city to work as a prostitute at Madame Odette's establishment. Jones and Ximenes conspire to replace Mendez as President by Conchas, who organises a putsch and takes power.
, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
) that Weill was leaving behind him than to the Broadway operas like Knickerbocker Holiday
, One Touch of Venus
and Love Life that were to follow. An important influence, however, and one not common to either group, is the music of Offenbach
.
Operetta
Operetta is a genre of light opera, light in terms both of music and subject matter. It is also closely related, in English-language works, to forms of musical theatre.-Origins:...
by Kurt Weill
Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, 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...
. The German libretto was written by Robert Vambery.
Genesis
Weill and Vambery, both refugees from Nazi GermanyNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, met in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
in 1933 and began work on the operetta in 1934. Following the completion of the libretto, attempts to interest theatre managers in Paris and Zürich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
in staging the operetta proved abortive, and Weill turned to other projects, leaving most of the musical numbers complete but unorchestrated.
The German word Kuhhandel means "cattle trading". In German slang of the 1930s it referred to manoeuverings by politicians.
Performances and versions
In early 1935, Weill and Vambery collaborated with Reginald ArkellReginald Arkell
Reginald Arkell was a British script writer and comic novelist who wrote many musical plays for the London theatre. The most popular of those was an adaptation of the spoof history book 1066 and All That: 1066—and all that: A Musical Comedy based on that Memorable History by Sellar and Yeatman...
(book) and Desmond Carter (lyrics) on a three-act English-language musical comedy version of the operetta called A Kingdom for a Cow. This premiered on 28 June 1935 at the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, under the baton of Muir Matheson. It achieved a critical success but failed at the box-office, running for only two weeks.
In 1978, Lys Symonette, Weill's friend and assistant, prepared a reconstruction of the original two-act operetta, and this was published by Schott Musik in 1981. This version was first performed in concert in Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and centre of the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region.Düsseldorf is an important international business and financial centre and renowned for its fashion and trade fairs. Located centrally within the European Megalopolis, the...
on 22 March 1990 (conductor: Jan Latham Koenig
Jan Latham Koenig
Jan Latham-Koenig is a conductor. He was born in England and educated at the Royal College of Music in London. He attended Highgate School from 1966 before he founded the Koenig Ensemble in 1976 and began his career as a concert conductor with the BBC, in 1981...
) and on stage at the Deutsch-Sorbisches Volkstheater, Bautzen
Bautzen
Bautzen is a hill-top town in eastern Saxony, Germany, and administrative centre of the eponymous district. It is located on the Spree River. As of 2008, its population is 41,161...
(conductor: Dieter Kempe, director Wolfgang Poch) in 1994.
The United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
première, in an English-language version by Jeremy Sams
Jeremy Sams
Jeremy Sams is a British film director, writer, translator, orchestrator, musical director, film composer, and lyricist....
, took place on 11 April 2000 at the Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
(conductor, Randall Behr, director Frank Corsaro
Frank Corsaro
Frank Corsaro is one of America's foremost stage directors of opera and theatre. His Broadway productions include The Night of the Iguana ....
). The first performance in Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...
of the Symonette version was given by Opera North
Opera North
Opera North is an English opera company based in Leeds. The company's home theatre is the Leeds Grand Theatre, but it also presents regular seasons in several other cities, at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham, the Lowry Centre, Salford Quays and the Theatre Royal, Newcastle...
on 30 March 2006, at the Alhambra Theatre
Bradford Alhambra
The Bradford Alhambra is a theatre in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It was built in 1913 at a cost of £20,000 for theatre impresario Francis Laidler, and opened on Wednesday 18 March 1914. In 1964 Bradford City Council bought the Alhambra for £78,900. In 1974 it was designated a Grade II...
, Bradford
Bradford
Bradford lies at the heart of the City of Bradford, a metropolitan borough of West Yorkshire, in Northern England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, west of Leeds, and northwest of Wakefield. Bradford became a municipal borough in 1847, and received its charter as a city in 1897...
. The conductor was Jim Holmes and the director was David Pountney
David Pountney
David Pountney is a British theatre and opera director and librettist internationally known for his productions of rarely performed operas and new productions of classic works...
, who also collaborated with Sams on a revised translation. This production was first seen (in German) at the Kornmarkttheater, Bregenz
Bregenz
-Culture:The annual summer music festival Bregenzer Festspiele is a world-famous festival which takes place on and around a stage on Lake Constance, where a different opera is performed every second year.-Sport:* A1 Bregenz HB is a handball team....
, on 13 August 2004.
Roles
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, concert version 22 March 1990 (Conductor: Jan Latham Koenig) |
|---|---|---|
| Juan Santos | tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2... |
|
| Juanita Sanchez | soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody... |
|
| President Mendez | tenor | |
| Jones | baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or... |
|
| Ximenes | tenor | |
| General Garcia Conchas | baritone | |
| Juan's mother | soprano | |
| Juanita's father | baritone | |
| Ucquan Foreign Minister | baritone | |
| Madame Odette | soprano | |
Synopsis
- Place: The fictional country of Santa Maria, which shares a Caribbean island with another state, Ucqua.
Act 1
Juan owns a cow, whose milk generates enough money to enable him to marry his sweetheart, Juanita, who has no dowry. Meanwhile, the peace-loving President Mendez and his advisor Ximenes are approached by Jones, an American arms dealer, who fabricates reports that Ucqua is re-arming and persuades them to buy weapons from him.As Santa Maria is short of money, Mendez and Ximenez introduce a new tax to pay for the weapons. Juan cannot pay, his cow is impounded and the wedding with Juanita is called off. Juan works as a stevedore to earn enough money to get the cow back, but a second attempt at a wedding is again foiled by the impounding of the cow. This is because a second tax has had to be imposed at the behest of the war-mongering General Conchas, who plans manoeuvres on the border with Ucqua. Juan is called up into the army, and, to earn money for a replacement cow, Juanita goes into the city to work as a prostitute at Madame Odette's establishment. Jones and Ximenes conspire to replace Mendez as President by Conchas, who organises a putsch and takes power.
Act 2
Conchas visits Madame Odette's to celebrate his takeover and is captivated by Juanita. Next day, despite a hangover, he takes part in a military parade organised by Ximenes. Juan, who has no desire to be a soldier, punches the General and is sentenced to death. Luckily, the guns that Jones has sold to Santa Maria fail to go off, whereupon it turns out that the guns that he has also sold to Ucqua are also defective. President Conchas opts for peaceful coexistence with Ucqua and pardons Juan, who can now reclaim his cow with the help of his army pay and Juanita's earnings, and at last the couple can get married.The music
Musically, Der Kuhhandel is closer to the bitter-sweet German works (e.g. The Threepenny OperaThe Threepenny Opera
The Threepenny Opera is a musical by German dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, in collaboration with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and set designer Caspar Neher. It was adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique...
, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed in Leipzig on 9 March 1930.-Composition history:...
) that Weill was leaving behind him than to the Broadway operas like Knickerbocker Holiday
Knickerbocker Holiday
Knickerbocker Holiday is a musical written by Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson ; it was directed by Joshua Logan. Among the songs introduced was the "September Song", now considered a pop standard.- History :...
, One Touch of Venus
One Touch of Venus
One Touch of Venus is a musical with music written by Kurt Weill, lyrics by Ogden Nash, and book by S. J. Perelman and Nash, based on the novella The Tinted Venus by Thomas Anstey Guthrie, and very loosely spoofing the Pygmalion myth. The show satirizes contemporary American suburban values,...
and Love Life that were to follow. An important influence, however, and one not common to either group, is the music of Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach was a Prussian-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s–1870s and his uncompleted opera The Tales of Hoffmann. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss, Jr....
.
Recordings
- (CD) Excerpts, conducted by Jan Latham KoenigJan Latham KoenigJan Latham-Koenig is a conductor. He was born in England and educated at the Royal College of Music in London. He attended Highgate School from 1966 before he founded the Koenig Ensemble in 1976 and began his career as a concert conductor with the BBC, in 1981...
: Eberhard Büchner, Lucy Peacock, Christian Schotenröhr, Walter Raffeiner, Oskar Hillebrandt, Cologne Radio Symphony Orchestra and chorus; Capriccio 60 013-1 (1990).
- (DVD) Complete, conducted by Christoph Eberle: Ursula Pfitzner, Dietmar Kirschbaum, Michael Kraus, Vienna VolksoperVienna VolksoperThe Vienna Volksoper is a major opera house in Vienna, Austria. It gives about three hundred performances of twenty-five productions during an annual season running from September through June....
, directed by David Pountney; Phoenix 803 (2007).