After being banned from involvement in any form of musical activity under the Nazi regime, Kurt Weill moved to Paris in 1933. Shortly after his arrival, Boris Kochno, co-director of the Ballets 33 company alongside a young Balanchine, commissioned a ballet from him. Weill initially considered working with Cocteau, but eventually joined forces with Bertolt Brecht, with whom he had fallen out several years previously, on what would be their last collaboration. An unflinching indictment of a society in decline, this work is divided into seven sequences featuring a waltz, foxtrot, march, tarantella and a male vocal quartet. This parable of social dualism (authoritarianism versus anarchy) is embodied by the female character, Anna I, and her dancing doppelganger Anna II. In a combination of part-spoken and part-sung banter, and choral song in the pure Lutheran tradition, Kurt Weill explores the full spectrum of a musical piece which is riddled with instability to echo the society he is depicting.
