There are major historical and political reasons why most audiences are unfamiliar with Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake). Chicago Opera Theater is reclaiming this obscure German hybrid work for its Chicago premiere at the Studebaker Theater in early March.
Der Silbersee was the last collaboration between The Threepenny Opera composer Kurt Weill and German expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser. Their previous one-act operas The Protagonist in 1926 established Weill’s theater reputation, while The Czar has his Photograph Taken was a 1928 espionage thriller.
“It was the last piece that Weill wrote in Germany,” said Chicago Opera Theater general director Lawrence Edelson. “One of the reasons I decided to do (Der Silbersee) in German—which is honestly a big undertaking for an American opera company—is to really honor the history behind the piece.”
Der Silbersee had the unfortunate timing of opening on Feb. 18, 1933. That was in the treacherous window after Hitler came to power on Jan. 30 of that year, but before the burning of the Reichstag the following month, which gave the Nazi Party an excuse to abolish many constitutional protections as Germany veered into a dictatorship.
Since Weill was Jewish, the Nazis then banned all of his works which they had labeled “entartete” or degenerate. Kaiser’s works were similarly censured by the Nazis for their anti-war stance. Warned that the Nazis intended to arrest him, Weill soon fled Germany for France. Weill’s talent helped him to resettle in 1935 to the United States where he became a Broadway composer of 1940s hits like Lady in the Dark and One Touch of Venus. Kaiser went into exile in Switzerland in 1938.
Not quite a full-out opera, Edelson said Der Silbersee is akin to what American audiences might see as a serious musical or dark operetta. Der Silbersee notably had a simultaneous opening night in the three cities of Leipzig, Erfurt and Magdeburg when Germany had a system of spoken-word theaters that also had access to operatic singers and orchestral forces.
“Der Silbersee really speaks to what is happening in the United States today,” said Edelson about how the work explores issues like hunger, class, wealth inequality and police brutality.
But Weill and Kaiser also billed Der Silbersee as Ein Wintermärchen or A Winter’s Fairy Tale.” Though the subtitle brings to mind a Shakespeare problem play, Der Silbersee is more of a direct reference to exile Heinrich Heine’s oft-banned 1844 epic satirical poem Ein Wintermärchen which reflected on political repression and longing for homeland.
“It is really quite remarkable that (Der Silbersee) does this in the framework of a fairytale,” Edelson said. “Not to mention that the music is some of Weill’s absolutely best music. It’s an extraordinary score.”
In 1980, the New York City Opera hired Broadway director Harold Prince (Sweeney Todd, Evita) to stage a major American premiere of Der Silbersee with Tony and Academy Award winner Joel Grey (Cabaret) in the policeman role of Olim. Though an audio recording was made on the Nonesuch label, the much-altered English adaptation of the newly titled Silverlake was not a critical success.
“It really wasn’t the original conception of the piece,” said Edelson, noting that Kaiser’s original work was thrown out and replaced with new English lyrics by Lys Symonette and a rewritten book by Hugh Wheeler. Prince did a similar thing when he directed a freewheeling 1974 Broadway revival of Leonard Bernstein’s Candide with a new Wheeler script that replaced Lillian Hellman’s original 1956 book that was withdrawn from licensing.
Edelson did have to trim Kaiser’s lengthy German script for pacing reasons. But Edelson also restored non-singing characters who are left out of the ‘90s studio recordings of Der Silbersee on the Capriccio label (which had a narrator summarizing Kaiser’s script) and the music-only approach of RCA Victor/BMG.
Some critics have interpreted Der Silbersee as a gay-coded work. One crucial plot point focuses on the obsessive relationship between a repentant policeman named Olim. His sudden wealth prompts Olim to care for the wounded political protester Severin, who was shot during a petty robbery of a once luxury item.
“The fable is a strange one, filled with homoerotic undertones beneath its ‘social’ message,” said author Ronald Sander about Der Silbersee in his 1980 Kurt Weill biography The Days Grow Short.
Though a gay man himself, Edelson isn’t exactly leaning into this approach with his Chicago Opera Theater staging. Edelson reasons that Weill and Kaiser probably did not intentionally include any gay coding, yet he isn’t adverse to audiences looking for that interpretation.
Olim is played by American bass-baritone Justin Hopkins, who is a second place winner of the Kurt Weill Foundation’s 2012 Lotte Lenya Competition. Hopkins is also a soloist on the Capriccio audio recording of Opera North’s 2025 concert version of Weill’s 1948 concept musical Love Life co-written with Alan Jay Lerner of future My Fair Lady fame.
American tenor Chaz’men Williams-Ali returns to play the protesting Severin, while conductor James Lowe makes his Chicago Opera Theater debut with Der Silbersee. The main cast is rounded out by Irish-American soprano Ariana Strahl as the encouraging servant Fennimore, with American mezzo-soprano Leah Dexter as the scheming Frau von Luber. American tenor Dylan Morrongiello also doubles as her Act II accomplice, Baron Laur, and the The Lottery Agent in Act I.
“I think what is quite extraordinary about what Weill and Kaiser have done is the piece does leave us with a lot of hope,” Edelson said. “The thing that I think will really resonate with everyone—regardless of what side of the political spectrum they’re on—is that we are a really fractured society at odds with each other and this is a piece that asks us to have empathy. To think about each other and how we have hope in a fractured world.”
Chicago Opera Theater’s Der Silbersee plays three performances only at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 4, and 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, March 7 and 8, at the Studebaker Theater, 410 S. Michigan Ave. In German with projected English translations. Tickets are $58-$158. Visit chicagooperatheater.org/silbersee-weill for more information.