The New York Festival of Song (NYFOS), led by Artistic Director Steven Blier, continues its 2022-23 Mainstage Series with KABARETT on Wednesday, November 16 at 8 PM at Kaufman Music Center/Merkin Hall.
The program highlights songs from Berlin’s fabled nightspots during the Weimar era, featuring music by Hollaender, Spoliansky, Bienert, Tucholsky, Eisler, and others. Soprano Sari Gruber, mezzo-soprano Naomi Louisa O’Connell, and baritone Justin Austin join Mr. Blier at the piano.
Berlin was a hotbed of cabaret nightlife in the 1920s. These nightclubs became the artistic home for some of Germany’s sharpest composers and lyricists, who supplied songs satirizing the tumult of the era. As Europe recovered from the ravages of the First World War, everything was in flux—politics, sexuality, psychology, and science. All of it became fodder for a brilliant repertoire of cabaret songs, whose ironic wit speaks to our current times with uncanny insight. Kabarett will be sung in both the original German and in English translations by Jeremy Lawrence.
“The issues they deal with—the vicissitudes of sexuality and gender, the loneliness and the dazzle of city life, the menace of political despots—could have been ripped from today’s headlines,” said Mr. Blier on curating the program. “The songs have humor, grit, and political insight.”
For more information and tickets, click here.
The Kaufmann Music Center is located at 129 W. 67th St., NYC
