Der Zar lässt sich fotografieren - Die sieben Todsünden

In the organizer's words:

On the double anniversary of Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill is one of the most remarkable composers of the first half of the 20th century. His oeuvre stands like no other for the color of the Weimar Republic, for the wild Berlin of the seemingly "golden 20s" and for a new conception of musical theater. The year 2025 marks Weill's 125th birthday and the 75th anniversary of his death. To mark the occasion, the Pfalztheater has put together an exciting double bill with two works by Kurt Weill that exemplify the composer's stylistic range.

Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht worked together for the last time in The Seven Deadly Sins. The work comes at the end of a series of groundbreaking theater works by the two famous artists, ranging from the Threepenny Opera to the opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and the song play Happy End. In a sophisticated combination of song and dance, the sisters Anna I and Anna II's path to success through the cities is told as they sell themselves piece by piece. The deadly sins of Christian tradition are reinterpreted as the deadly sins of capitalism.

The grotesque one-act play Der Zar lässt sich fotografieren, based on a text by Georg Kaiser, tells the story of the Russian Tsar who wants to be photographed in the photo studio of the beautiful Angèle in Paris. Of course, he has no way of knowing that assassins have replaced the "real" Angèle with a "fake" Angèle and hidden a pistol in the camera. But an erotic flirtation, including a tango dance, develops between the tsar and the fake photographer, so that there is no "shot" for the time being ...

Kurt Weill, a Jew and a hostile musical avant-gardist, left Germany with his wife Lotte Lenya in March 1933 after Hitler's appointment as Reich Chancellor and the Reichstag fire. His first stop was Paris, where The Seven Deadly Sins premiered in July 1933 with his wife, the actress Lotte Lenya, as his interpreter. Weill then moved on to the USA, where he not only produced the American opera Street Scene, but also conquered Broadway with musicals such as One Touch of Venus, Lady in the Dark and Lost in the Stars. His early death in 1950 at the age of just 50 marked the abrupt end of an extremely rich career as a composer.

Watch the trailerhere!

Admission one hour before the start of each performance