Der Silbersee, the last work Weill composed in Germany before fleeing the Nazis in 1933, is in some ways the most ambitious of all his European theatre pieces. It isn’t an opera, but an epic drama with large-scale orchestra and chorus to augment the singing actors. Georg Kaiser, Weill’s friend and collaborator on two earlier operas was one of the most successful dramatists in Germany; Der Silbersee was his 40th work for the stage. In it Weill found a new voice musically, one he would use immediately afterwards in the two works he wrote in Paris later in 1933, the Second Symphony and the ballet-chante, Die sieben Todsunden.
There have been two previous recordings, one in English as Silverlake, based on the 1980 New York City Opera production starring Joel Grey Nonesuch, 3/85 - nla) , and one in German, conducted by Jan Latham-Konig. This new one is easily the best, and is based on a concert performance at the 1996 Proms in London. The problem with Der Silbersee in concert, and to a lesser extent on disc, is that once the lengthy scenes of dialogue have been removed, the impact of many of the musical points is lost. For instance, the two best-known songs, Fennimore’s aria ‘Ich bin eine arme Verwandte’ and the Ballad of Caesar’s Death occur in different scenes in Act 2, yet come next to each other here.
Weill’s use of the chorus to advance the story and add a commentary, is something he would develop in a more conventionally oratorio-like way in Der Weg der Verheissung and then to greatest effect in his last completed work, Lost in the Stars. Two London productions have shown that the work is dramatically viable, although Kaiser’s text, with its own brand of social expressionism, is hard to translate. Its story of homeless men, trigger-happy policemen, lottery tickets and swindling hypocrites has a topical appeal in each decade. What it lacks is that quality of sarcastic wit which brought out the best in Weill - in his works with Brecht in Europe and then with Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner and Ogden Nash in the USA.
In his essay on Der Silbersee, ‘Music as Metaphor’, Ian Kemp suggests that in this work ‘Weill began to disentangle the components of his inner conflict, the ruthlessness and the charm. ‘The music always gives way to the drama here, so that the ending, which on stage can be extraordinarily moving, just fades away. (The two men, who have been enemies but are united in despair, decide to drown themselves in the lake, but when they reach the shore, it’s frozen over and a voice tells them that they must go on.)
The singing here is good, with H. K. Gruber characterful as Olim, and Heinz Kruse, in the part created in Magdeburg by Ernst Busch (who recorded two songs at the time) torn between love and revenge. Helga Dernesch is typically incisive in her one sung contribution, an all-too-brief duet. Those who know recordings of Fennimore’s two songs by Lotte Lenya, Ute Lemper and others may find Juanita Lascarro a trifle restrained, but she is singing in character, whereas Lenya and all the other chanteuses are giving the songs a makeover in the tradition of cabaret.'