Marie Galante songs

Weill’s music for Jacques Déval’s play Marie Galante was one of the last scores he wrote in Europe before he departed for America in 1935. Leaving Germany in some danger in 1933, he had made for Paris and had unwillingly renewed his collaboration with Brecht in Die sieben Todessünden (The Seven Deadly Sins) which however, failed to achieve a more than polite reception, in spite of Lotte Lenya’s singing and Massine’s choreography. His venture into the commercial theatre, with Marie Galante brought him little more success, even though his songs and incidental music proved to be more popular than the play itself. Youkali was originally an orchestral tango: the words were added, with less than consummate skill, by Roger Fernay and published more than ten years later. Le grand Lustucru is a song of such melodic interest that it inspired an arrangement by Lucian Berio for Cathy Berberian while J'attends un navire was adopted not as an anthem for the oldest profession but as a song for the Résistance during the War.