Kurt Julian Weill was a German, and in his later years German-American, composer active from the 1920s until his death. He was a leading composer for the stage, as well as writing a number of concert works.
"Lost in the Stars" is the only one of Weills Broadway musicals to be filmed faithfully.
Weill emigrated from Germany to the US with the rise of Nazism. He was known for his use of highly unusual subject matter in musicals. Few of them were true hits. "The Threepenny Opera", written in cooperation with Bertolt Brecht , which premiered in Germany , introduced the song "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" and became a hit. In its first American production on Broadway, it flopped in 1933, but became a smash off-Broadway hit in Marc Blitzstein s 1954 translation, running more than five years. Weills widow Lotte Lenya received a Tony Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1956 for playing "Jenny" in this version of the play.
Weill was one of the few Broadway composers to orchestrate and do the vocal arrangements for his own musicals.
All of the television versions of Weills Broadway musicals have actually been more faithful than the theatrical film versions--with the exception of "Lost in the Stars", which was filmed faithfully in 1974 ( Lost in the Stars ), but never adapted for television.
He was nominated for a 1998 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for "Lady in the Dark", performed at the Royal National Theatre: Lyttelton, for Best New Musical of the 1997 season.
His musical "Lady in the Dark" was awarded the 1997 London Evening Standard Theatre Award for Best Musical.
Won Broadways 1947 Tony Award as Best Composer for "Street Scene."
His works for Broadway include several respected shows such as "Lady in the Dark" , "Love Life" and "Lost in the Stars".
Born to a religious Jewish family, he went to Berlin in 1918 to study music composition and wrote his first symphony at that time.
Is buried, with Lotte Lenya , in Mount Repose Cemetery, Haverstraw, new York.
Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.
"A Kurt Weill Cabaret" at the Theo Ubique Cabaret Theatre in Chicago, Illinois was nominated for a 2015 Joseph Jefferson Non-Equity Award for Revue Production.
