A Tribute to Kurt Weill, Broadway, and the Berlin of the Roaring Twenties
Brigitte Oelke, vocals & Wolfgang Roese, piano
Choristers, choir soloists, instrumentalists & guest soloists of ORSO
“And the shark babe, has some teeth dear…”
Many of Kurt Weill’s songs are world-famous, and some have even become jazz standards, such as “Speak Low,” “My Ship,” or “Mack the Knife.” They have been interpreted by legends like Ella Fitzgerald, Marianne Faithfull, Nina Hagen, and The Doors. His hits are more familiar to most people than the composer himself. In Germany, his name is usually associated only with the works he created before fleeing to America: The Threepenny Opera or the Mahagonny Songspiel. His Broadway works such as Street Scene, One Touch of Venus, or Lady in the Dark are rarely heard in this country.
What does all this have to do with ORSO (Orchestra & Choral Society e. V.)?
ORSO’s founder is Wolfgang Roese, born in Kippenheim and now living in Berlin—the city where Kurt Weill created The Threepenny Opera, which is still staged and celebrated at the Berliner Ensemble today. In Kippenheim, however—just two houses down from Obere Hauptstr. 7, where Roese grew up—lived Kurt Weill’s parents, Albert and Emma. They moved to Dessau in 1899 and later emigrated to Palestine. Albert served as cantor of the synagogue in Kippenheim, a picturesque village in southern Baden. It was there that the ORSOvocals launched an extraordinary performance last summer titled “Grit and Glamour.”
ORSOvocals are the voices of the ORSO choir from Freiburg, Stuttgart, and Berlin. Alongside choral-symphonic and crossover programs, they devote themselves with great passion to musical theatre. The choristers slip into the roles of characters from Weill’s works, bringing the wild 1920s and the dark 1930s to life in a spirited revue on the stage of the Paulussaal Freiburg.
Audiences can experience the playful and dance-loving ORSOvocals under the direction of Wolfgang Roese at the piano, performing Kurt Weill’s world hits from both his German and American creative periods.