Output details

Marie Galante

Research content/process:

This project was a commission from the Kurt Weill Foundation in New York to reconstruct from fragments, incorporating and orchestrating additional material, a performing version of an incomplete work by Weill, composed and first performed in Paris in 1933. This was for production by Opera Français, a New York-based opera company specialising in French works. The original 1933 production of Marie Galante was not a success. It was hurriedly slung together by author Jacques Deval who took his share of the advance and immediately left for Hollywood. Weill, a recent refugee from Germany, accepted the commission through financial necessity. The hostile reception accorded to the piece led to its consignment to the dusty shelves of the commercial theatre and only three songs from it were formally published. The material which survives – an incomplete set of orchestral parts, manuscript sketches and fragments - are in the holdings of the Beinecke Library at Yale. Using the Deval libretto as a spine, Scott set about listing and reconstructing where possible the songs and instrumental numbers that Weill had composed. He incorporated two songs published at around the same time, together with an instrumental piece, published as a tango. These were orchestrated for the orchestral line-up originally specified for Marie Galante carefully adopting the mannerisms which Weill had developed during his sojourn in Paris. The performance based on the reconstruction work was well-received, but it revealed the lumbering linear nature of Deval’s libretto. Scott remains in discussion with the board of the Kurt Weill Edition as to what may be published under the auspices of their Collected Works critical edition, and a performing edition based on his 2008 reconstruction is available from the European American Music Corporation, New York.