Dear friends of the Kurt Weill Festival in Dessau,

This year it is a particular pleasure for us to invite you to Dessau-Roßlau, Wittenberg and Bitterfeld to help us celebrate a mini jubilee: 20 years of the Kurt Weill Festival.
With satisfaction and not a little pride we look back on the development of the past years while remembering the very first festival in 1993. We recall that it was in the autumn of 1992 when three representatives of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music in New York commissioned the mayor at that time, Jürgen Neubert, to found a festival which would honour the memory of local boy Kurt Weill. In the meantime these tender beginnings have grown and solidified into a permanent music festival, attracting outstanding artists and wonderful audiences. We are truly grateful for this happy development, while not forgetting the responsibility to send a positive image of Saxony-Anhalt out into the world.
Following the success of last year's theme „Berlin im Licht“, the Kurt Weill Festival 2012 now turns the spotlight on the second station in the life and work of the composer, with the motto „Hommage à Paris“. We remember that this great city on the Seine, the epitome of joie de vivre, was also a place of refuge for many of those persecuted by the Nazi regime.
Kurt Weill remained clear-eyed in his belief that the Nazi regime would remain in power for a long time, writing to his Viennese publisher in February 1933: „I certainly do not share your opinion that Germany's new path can only be a nightmare of a few months.“ He was forced to leave Germany at short notice, taken out of the country in the car of his friend, the stage designer Caspar Neher. With only a few scant belongings Kurt Weill arrived in Paris on March 23rd; as early as April 3rd he wrote again to his publisher that since arriving he had been pestered by its new director to write a ballet for the legendary dance company founded by impresario Serge Diaghilev. From these tentative beginnings, this work would eventually become „The Seven Deadly Sins“.
Later Weill recounted in an interview that by 1933 he was already itching for a change of air, and that the Nazis merely provided the final push. It is hard to imagine a clearer indication of Weill's desire to actively shape his life and career, and therefore it comes as no surprise that the composer so readily adapted his style to the cultural and public tastes reigning in Paris and the rest of France at that time.
Reflecting the character of Kurt Weill, we have organized a highly diverse, life-affirming festival which nonetheless will provide much food for thought. We warmly invite you to Dessau to make a musical trip through time in this city of classical modernity!


Come to the city of classical modernity and take a musical journey with us – we can't wait to see you!


Yours sincerely,

Prof. Michael Kaufmann
Intendant and Director Kurt Weill Centre