★★★☆☆
A failed Broadway musical by Kurt Weill arrests my attention. Reading that Weill deemed it “pregnant with possibilities for the non-realistic theatre”, I cancel all calls.
Weill and librettist Alan Jay Lerner had an idea of charting American marriage and working life from 1791 to 1948, a plan far too ambitious for Broadway. The show closed after just seven months and was not seen again for seven decades until a German revival in 2017 and the present concert staging in Leeds earlier this year.
Love Life had a lot stacked against it — a first-act show-stopper called “Economics”, an English madrigal as curtain raiser — not to mention a divorce ballet that danced on the edge of the American dream. The sum of its 47 different parts was a revival killer and the desperate hiring of Elia Kazan as director when he had two other shows on the go did no-one any favours. Weill died 18 months later, Lerner moved on to My Fair Lady.
That said, Love Life is essential
Opera North employed a Mozart-plus orchestra for its revival of the work, treating the score as a followup to Street Scene, a qualified Weill success. James Holmes conducts well through patches of unevenness and some arias are truly moving. “Is It Him Or Is It Me?” is top-drawer Weill — like “I’m a Stranger Here Myself”, only with added cynicism. Stephanie Corley and Quirin de Lang give their all in leading parts that lack character. This is Berlin meets Brooklyn on a drawing board that never finds its balance.
That said, Love Life is essential. Stephen Sondheim called it “useful” in his own development, a massive understatement. Love Life was foundational for Sondheim. There is no “Company” or “Merrily” or “Pacific Overtures” without it. It is the start of something new. Opera North deserve a Tony for this achievement.
