Scott C Morgan sees Chicago Opera Theater – the Windy City’s second-oldest and often more adventurous opera company – in Kurt Weill’s Der Silbersee.
| Title | Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake) |
| Company | Chicago Opera Theater |
| Venue | Studebaker Theater, Chicago |
| Date | 4 March 2026 |
| Reviewer | Scott C Morgan |
After staging the Chicago premiere of Antonio Salieri’s Falstaff this past December, Chicago Opera Theater is performing another rare operatic resurrection with the Windy City premiere of Der Silbersee (The Silver Lake). It’s intriguing and inventive programming like this that allows the 52-year-old Chicago Opera Theater, the Windy City’s second-oldest and often more adventurous opera company, to step out of the long shadow of the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Der Silbersee was the final collaboration between composer Kurt Weill (Die Dreigroschenoper, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny) and expressionist playwright Georg Kaiser (Die Bürger von Calais, Von Morgens bis Mitternachts). Weill and Kaiser had previous successes creating the one-act operas Der Protagonist in 1926 and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren in 1928.
It also made sense for Weill to return to a former collaborator, especially after he had a major artistic falling out with playwright Bertolt Brecht in the early 1930s. The two had major disagreements over their Dreigroschenoper film adaptation and a scaled-down Mahagonny in Berlin.
Der Silbersee premiered simultaneously in the three German cities of Leipzig, Erfurt and Magdeburg on 18 February 1933. That was in the treacherous time window after Hitler came to power on 30 January and before the burning of the Reichstag on 27 February.
Since Weill was Jewish and already labelled by the Nazi Party as an “entartete” (degenerate) composer, he understandably fled to France once he received a tip-off that he was soon to be arrested. Kaiser exiled himself to Switzerland in 1938.
Weill would die of a heart attack in 1950 in the United States, where he had emigrated to in 1935 and had found success on Broadway with enduring music-theatre works like Street Scene and Lost in the Stars. Der Silbersee carries the weight of both being Weill’s last work written in his homeland and being an artistic relic of that fraught moment of German history.
Chicago Opera Theater general director Lawrence Edelson makes a strong case for delving back into Der Silbersee with an enlightening production. It succeeds despite the sometimes strangeness of Kaiser’s libretto (Der Silbersee is structured mainly as a play with songs and orchestral interludes).
Edelson crucially frames Der Silbersee as a dream derived from a young woman reading a book at bedtime. This device neatly ties into the work’s subtitle of Ein Wintermärchen or A Winter’s Fairy Tale, and helps to explain away the weirdness of sudden plot twists.
Rather than using the 1980 New York City Opera English adaptation by lyricist Lys Symonette and playwright Hugh Wheeler, Edelson opted to stage Der Silbersee in its original German. This decision is greatly aided by Jeffrey D. Kmiec’s clever unit set featuring a sky-painted house interior that allows for scenes to easily switch between exterior and indoor scenes. There’s also a bridge/floor divider where the English translations are centrally projected close to the performers onstage.
Der Silbersee focuses on the relationship between the outcast thief Severin (tenor Caz’men Williams-Ali) and the remorseful policeman Olim (bass-baritone Justin Hopkins). After symbolically burying an effigy of hunger in the forest, Severin and his band of hungry youths (Steele Fitzwater, Leroy Davis, Evan Bravos and Sam Grosby) decide to rob a city grocery store.
There, the outcasts encounter two shop girls (Boya Wei and Sophia Maekawa) who plaintively sing about capitalistic pricing and the waste that they encounter on a daily basis. While Severin’s friends clear out the shop, he just steals a pineapple—a historic symbol of upper-class luxury.
While fleeing, Severin is shot and wounded by Olim, who is only following the orders of the non-singing “Fat Policeman” (Korey Simeone). Later, riddled with guilt via a singing chorus of his own higher conscience (strategically positioned over the audience in the Studebaker Theater’s balcony), Olim pledges to personally take in Severin to help him recuperate.
Olim makes this decision after he unexpectedly wins the lottery. Despite the prodding of the Lottery Agent (tenor Dylan Morrongiello) to be seduced by compound interest in a sung tango ballad, Olim instead purchases a castle.
But complications ensue with Olim’s housekeeper, Frau von Luber (mezzo-soprano Leah Dexter). She schemes to reestablish her noble position alongside Baron Laur (Morrongiello, again) by stealing Olim’s wealth away.
Frau von Luber’s plans include manipulating her impoverished relative, named Fennimore (soprano Ariana Strahl) to help ferret out secrets between Olim and Severin. Though Fennimore unwittingly assists in the financial fall of these two men, her encouraging singing in the finale prods a reconciled Olim and Severin to choose life over death as they bravely cross the Silver Lake to a more hopeful future.
Weill’s music for Der Silbersee is hauntingly beautiful throughout—especially the wistful choral conclusion that is prophetic of Weill’s own journey across a big body of water to find freedom and safety. Edelson’s staging helped to capture this with often whimsical costumes by Erik Teague and the skilled lighting design of Marcella Barbeau.
Chicago Opera Theater’s Der Silbersee cast largely has to vocal goods to deliver on the sung material. Yet I would have liked a little more volume from Williams-Ali to power over the orchestra for Severin’s rage-filled revenge arias, and perhaps a more secure attack on the high notes from Morrongiello as the Lottery Agent.
On the acting side, Dexter mostly stands out as the deliciously villainous Frau von Luber. Other members of the cast didn’t quite embody the mix of earnestness and archness for their archetypal characters, though much of that blame can be pointed at the often weighty symbolism of Kaiser’s script.
Conductor James Lowe did a largely respectable job leading the orchestra, even if there were occasional flubs from the brass and one noticeably shaky rhythmical gear shift on opening night.
Though Kaiser’s script will likely deter other American opera companies from wading into the waters of Der Silbersee, Chicago Opera Theater’s staging emphasises that the beauty of Weill’s music still deserves to be heard. And the work’s messages stressing forgiveness and endurance in the face of overwhelming adversity not only make Der Silbersee a valiant curio of its own time, but a contemplative one for ours as well.
Chicago Opera Theater’s Der Silbersee continues at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, March 7 and 8, at the Studebaker Theater, Fine Arts Building, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago.
Tickets are $58-$158. For more information, visit ChicagoOperaTheater.org
Chicago-based Scott C. Morgan is an avid opera and theatergoer. He is a frequent freelance contributor to the Windy City Times, and previously served as that publication’s freelance theater editor from 2008 to 2018. He also worked primarily as an arts writer for the Daily Herald in suburban Chicago from 2004 to 2022.
He has raised donations as an endurance race runner for AIDS Foundation Chicago via its charity training program Team to End AIDS from 2011 to 2023, and also co-hosted two Opera Tunes fundraisers at Chicago’s famed Sidetrack Video Bar in 2019.