On the occasion of The Shedd Institute’s 35th annual Oregon Festival of American Music’s celebration of the international cross-currents which helped shape American popular music, we’ve asked long standing Shedd collaborator Siri Vik to bring together as many of her colleagues as she could to remount their 2019 faithfully-researched and staged re-creation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s final collaboration, The Seven Deadly Sins [Die sieben Todsünden].
The ballet chanté (sung ballet) was premiered in Paris by 29-year-old Russian choreographer George Balanchine’s short-lived dance company Les Ballets 1933 on June 7 1933 as Les sept péchés capitaux with Lotte Leyna and Tilly Losch in the lead dual-sung/danced-role Anna I/Anna II; two weeks later Les Ballets 1933 presented the work a second time in London under the title Anna-Anna; then it sat unperformed until Balanchine re-envisioned it and set it on his New York City Ballet in 1958. It has enjoyed an established place in repertoire since. But when Siri and The Shedd first began exploring the works of Weill and Brecht in 2009, we felt strongly that with its transformation into a staple of the American ballet, important aspects of Brecht’s libretto—most especially its blunt critique of what for him, as a socialist, was the only real deadly sin (capitalism)—had been lost.
All of us here at The Shedd were deeply impressed with what Siri and her team recreated in 2019 and are excited and honored to give it a new voice as a part of our year-long celebration of the international realities of American music.
Siri is joined in this recreation by most of her 2019 team: Robert Ashens as music director, Bill Hulings as director, Sara Stockwell as choreographer and, again, as Anna II to Siri’s Anna I, Caitlin Christopher (our original choreographer) as consultant, Connie Huston on the set, Nathalie Fortin at the piano, more than a few of our original team in the ensemble and orchestra, and a new costume designer, our much loved Anna Björnsdotter.
The ballet is prefaced by a set featuring selection of songs from Weill & Brecht’s other major collaborations Mahagonny-Songspiel and Rise And Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1927, 1930), The Threepenny Opera (1928), and Happy End (1929).
Saturday, January 17 at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday, January 18 at 3 p.m.