I know that I bore the shit out of you by going on about Greece, I can hear you say, "Not Greece again". But as far as I'm concerned, if you want to fly a kite, you have to know which way the wind is blowing, and Greece is telling us that.
The following extract is from an article by Paul Mason, the full article is well worth a read. History can tell us so much and allow us to be ready and get organised to take control of events, rather than let others and/or the events take control of us.
Of all the operas written during Germany's Weimar Republic (1919-33), probably the most haunting is the last. Kurt Weill's The Silver Lake, written with playwright Georg Kaiser, tells the story of two losers - a good-hearted provincial cop and the thief he has shot and wounded - as they make their way through a society ruined by unemployment, corruption and vice.The full article is well worth the read HERE:
After spending a week again in Greece - amid riots, hunger and far right violence - I finally understood it.
The opera was meant to be Weill's path back into the mainstream. It was his first break from collaborating with Bertolt Brecht, and was scheduled to open simultaneously in three German cities on 18 February 1933. But on 30 January Adolf Hitler was appointed Germany's chancellor. The first performances of The Silver Lake were disrupted by Nazi activists in the audience and on 4 March 1933 it was banned. The score was torched, together with its set designs, in the infamous book-burning ceremony outside the opera house in Berlin.
