The Seven Deadly Sins (ballet chanté)

The Seven Deadly Sins (German: Die sieben Todsünden,French: Les sept péchés capitaux) is a satirical ballet chanté ("sung ballet") in seven scenes (nine movements) composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht in 1933 under a commission from Boris Kochno and Edward James. It was translated into English by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman. It was the last major collaboration between Weill and Brecht.

With the Nazi seizure of power following the Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933, Brecht and Weill–especially Weill as a Jew–recognized that Berlin could no longer serve as their artistic home. Brecht left Berlin and traveled to Paris, stayed briefly in Prague, and then in Vienna. Less than a month later he was in Zurich and then moved to less expensive lodgings in Lugano, Switzerland. There a patron offered him living quarters in his summer home in Carona, outside Lugano. Weill spent time in Paris in December 1932, where he obtained the commission for the Seven Deadly Sins. He contacted Brecht in Carona and Brecht promptly joined him in Paris. The scenario of the libretto mirrors Brecht's own travels, expanded to one-year sojourns in each of seven cities.

Kurt Weill was commissioned to compose Die sieben Todsünden by Edward James, a wealthy Englishman who had been in Paris during Weill's visit in December 1932. James's wife, Tilly Losch, was a ballerina who James described as having a striking resemblance to Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya. Because James knew that Weill was going to write for Lenya, he included language in the contract commissioning the work requiring that his wife, Losch, dance opposite her lookalike. This dictated the complicated split personality plot before Bertolt Brecht was even asked to write the libretto.

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