When it comes to contemporary relevance, The Silver Lake certainly ticks a few boxes.  The collaboration between playwright Georg Kaiser and Kurt Weill to produce a play with music, described as a winter’s tale was first staged in 1933 in Berlin and comes freighted with significance. 

The story is, superficially, simple. In a time of hunger and austerity, some youths break into a shop to steal food. One is shot by a policeman as they run away. The policeman (Olim) feels sorry for the youth (Severin) and, winning a significant amount in a lottery, devotes himself to taking care of the youth, who seeks vengeance on the man who shot him. The castle the policeman bought is stolen from him by the aristocrat he has hired as a housekeeper. The policeman and the youth, who has lost his wish for vengeance, set off together, expelled from the castle.

So far, so fairy-tale. Only, this is Weill, and the youths had been hanging out at the silver lake, where they enact a mock burial of Hunger. Before the youths raid the shop, the shop girls sing of the profit motif and the need to destroy yesterday’s unsold goods to keep the margins high. Severin takes a pineapple and, when Olim (Ronald Samm) discovers that, it piques his interest, because it is an impractical, luxury fruit. Severin‘s later change of heart about vengeance, when it comes, is rather sudden – but that is Kaiser and Weill, rather than David Webb. Then the housekeeper (Clarissa Meek) turns out to be an aristocrat down on her luck. When she tricks Olim out of the castle, she invites her cousin the Baron (James Kryshak) to share it.  

The piece comes alive with the arrival of Fennimore, poor niece of the housekeeper - clearly the Lotte Lenya part, with great songs such as the Ballad of Caesar’s Death. Luci Briginshaw has a strong, clear voice, first spitting out the words of the ballad, then dulcet in her duet with Severin. She states the key to the tale, re-iterated at the end – The Silver Lake will bear anyone who must go further.

James Conway directs this English Touring Opera production with some concessions to the audience; although the spoken dialogue is in English, the songs are in German, with subtitles provided by a variety of means – a hand-cranked ticker-tape, placards, over-sized flashcards, even a table-cloth is pressed into service. Narrator Bernadette Iglich provides the continuity between the scenes, stating what is happening, for Adam Wiltshire’s set is constructed of scaffolding, pushed into position for castles, shops, Olim’s office.
The mix of spoken dialogue and song has its own symbolism - Olim only speaks until he wins the lottery and duets with Severin. The chorus – provided by local choirs – sing in English and the youths, when they are restraining Severin in the basement of the castle, reprise the song, which he sings in German, in English.

The ensemble singing is excellent and the movement – choreographed by Iglich – impressive.  Conductor James Holmes and the orchestra are well up to the challenge of Weill’s music - sometimes spiky, sometimes sweetly melodic, often with a jazzy rhythm.