cover image Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya

Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya

Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya. University of California Press, $50 (554pp) ISBN 978-0-520-07853-6

He was a well-educated cantor's son and important German composer who made a successful transition to pre-WWII Broadway and Hollywood. She was a dancer and actress who had once supported herself as a prostitute like Jenny in his Threepenny Opera. Married in 1926, they weathered separation, divorce and emigration to the U.S., ultimately remarrying in 1937 and living together until Weill's sudden death in 1950. Their relationship was by turns peaceful and tumultuous. But, during their time apart (on theatrical tours, sometimes with other lovers), they wrote each other at least weekly. The editors have gathered 410 missives, the vast majority (296) from Weill to Lenya. The writing is peppered, as one might expect, with references to theater associates such as Helen Hayes, Alan Jay Lerner, Maxwell Anderson, Marlene Dietrich (very stupid and superficial), Andre Malraux and Bertolt Brecht (whom Lenya disliked and distrusted). But the letters are equally full of domestic arrangements, endearments, naughty sketches, risque lyrics and pet names. Roughly half were written in German, but all have been smoothly translated to blend with later English letters. Symonette, who served as Weill's musical assistant starting in 1945, and musicologist Kowalke have wisely chosen to retain the original, at times highly idiosyncratic, spelling and grammar. While there is often something vaguely prurient about reading letters never intended for publication, the correspondence between Blumchen and her Weilili is unexpectedly charming and adds an informative and touching dimension to two well-known lives. (May)