Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

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Musical dates
Title: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn
Original language: German
Music: Kurt Weill
Book: John von Düffel (original lyrics by Maxwell Anderson )
Lyrics: John von Düffel
Literary source: Mark Twain :
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Premiere: 4th October 2014
Place of premiere: German Theater Göttingen
Playing time: 2 hours
Roles / people
  • Tom Sawyer
  • Huckleberry Finn
  • Aunt Polly (Tom's Aunt)
  • Sid (Tom's cousin)
  • Amy (Tom's "fiancée")
  • Becky Thatcher
  • Judge Thatcher
  • Doc Robinson
  • Indian Joe
  • Muff Potter (the murder suspect)
  • Pit Harper
  • Mrs. Harper (Pit's mother)

Supporting roles

  • The teacher
  • The widow Douglas
  • The sheriff and his deputy

Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn is a musical based on the plot of the novels about the adventures of Tom Sawyer and the half- orphan Huckleberry Finn by the American writer Mark Twain .

background

At the beginning of 1950, the Jewish composer Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson worked on a musical implementation for a play based on Twain's novel Huckleberry Finn . Since Weill died unexpectedly of heart failure in April 1950, this project was never ended. Around 60 years after his death, the draftsman and author John von Düffel merged the drafts with other Weill songs in a new libretto . It premiered on October 4, 2014 at the Deutsches Theater in Göttingen. As early as 1964, Weill's sheet music had come to Broadway conductor Milton Rosenstock through his former assistant Lys Symonétte through his widow and estate administrator Lotte Lenya and interpreted in a short film by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln .

The first love, the bonds of friendship and the struggle between keeping the promise and the importance of responsible behavior are underlined and clarified by musical themes. Mark Twain himself said of this story:

"Although my book is mainly written for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope that this is not why men and women avoid it, because with this book I intend, among other things, to kindly remind adults of what they once were, how they felt and thought and talked and what strange things they sometimes did. "

- Mark Twain : preface to the novel

action

The story of the two boys Tom Sayer and Huck Finn, who live in a small town on the edge of the Mississippi , is told . The two of them spend the summer together preferring fishing rather than going to school. When Becky Thatcher moves into town with her father, the new judge, Tom falls in love with her.

One night when the two friends go to the cemetery to remove warts with a dead cat and a magical spell, they watch the village doctor, Mister Robinson, being murdered in an argument with two men who are supposed to dig up a dead man for him . With this knowledge, they come into the line of fire of Indian Joe, who stabbed the doctor with the knife of his companion Muff Potter, who was passed out on the floor. The two boys swear not to tell anyone about this event.

Tom and Huck initially flee to an uninhabited island with Pit Harper in fear of revenge. Realizing they are believed dead, they return to watch the celebrations marking their presumed death. They identify themselves and testify as witnesses in the trial against the alleged murderer of Doc Robinson so that the innocent Muff Potter is not hanged. They are celebrated as heroes of justice. Huck is taken in by the widow Douglas and is supposed to study and attend school like everyone else. However, the real killer Indian Joe is still hiding nearby. When Tom and Becky get lost in a stalactite cave on a school trip, Huck saves their lives.

Performances (selection)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Tom Sawyer & Huckleberry Finn - German Theater in Göttingen. dt-goettingen.de, accessed on February 8, 2016 .
  2. ↑ TV opera Sticks immediately . In: Der Spiegel . No. 36 , 1964 ( online ).
  3. ↑ Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn - plot. united musicals.de, accessed on February 8, 2016 .
  4. ↑ Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (Basel 2014). united musicals.de, accessed on February 8, 2016 .
  5. ↑ Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. on cantemus-regensburg.de
  6. ^ Franzsches Feld: Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn ( Memento from February 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) on brunsviga-kulturzentrum.de