The Two 'Down in the Valley' Recordings

One of the first posts on this site was the Decca recording of one of Kurt Weill's last compositions, the 1948 folk opera Down in the Valley. But that was only one of two recordings of the work made in 1950. RCA Victor came out with a competing version that year.

Today's post includes the music from both 10-inch LPs: the Decca in a remastered version taken from the original album, and the RCA in a new transfer from a 1964 reissue. The latter combined Down in the Valley with another Weill work, the musical Lady in the Dark, which I featured several weeks ago.

The genesis of Down in the Valley 

Down in the Valley is a brief (45-minute) work built on several folk songs and designed for college and community forces. Weill and librettist Arnold Sundgaard had developed it in 1945 as a radio opera, but that production was shelved. In 1948, Hans Busch of the the Indiana University music school asked Weill if he could supply a work for his opera workshop. Weill was happy to comply - Busch was the son of his old friend and colleague, the conductor Fritz Busch - so he and Sundgaard reworked and expanded Down in the Valley for Indiana's use.

The opera was an immediate success with the public. The July 1948 production on the Bloomington, Indiana campus led to another a few weeks later in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan. The latter was broadcast, leading to dozens of college and amateur productions in the next few years.

The producers of television's nascent NBC Opera Theatre took notice. The NBC troupe had begun its 15-year history in 1949 with a staging of Menotti's The Old Maid and the Thief, commissioned by NBC radio in 1939. The Weill work became the TV Opera Theatre's second production, and was telecast on January 14, 1950. As far as I can tell, a kinescope does not survive.

Kurt Weill and Marion Bell in Bloomington

Conducting the televised opera was Peter Herman Adler, who was artistic director of the NBC Opera Theatre throughout its existence. The leading role of Jennie was taken by Marion Bell, who had been in the Bloomington production and previously was one of the leads in the original cast of Brigadoon. The male leads were William McGraw as Brack and Ray Jacquemot as the villain Bouché. Neither performer had illustrious careers, but both are excellent in the recording.

The competing LPs

Jane Wilson in 1946

RCA Victor was quick to capitalize on the interest Down in the Valley had excited, taking the television cast into the recording studio 11 days after the broadcast

Meanwhile, Decca took notice of the opera's popularity, and thought it might be a match for its newly acquired vocal star, Alfred Drake, who had appeared on Broadway several years before in the folk-based revue, Swing Out, Sweet Land. Decca had him record the work in April 1950. Taking the role of Jennie was Jane Wilson, who had risen to prominence on the radio with Fred Waring's troupe. The conductor was Maurice Levine, whom Weill had engaged to conduct Lost in the Stars on Broadway the year before.

Curiously, Weill stamped his imprimatur on the studio version rather than RCA's recording of the television production. He had supervised the Decca production until his death just three weeks before the recording session.

The two 1950 recordings of Down in the Valley were issued simultaneously, with both reviewed in the July 22 issue of Billboard. The critic there preferred the Decca version, but I vote for the RCA, which seems more settled, probably because it was based on an actual production. The sound on both is just fine.

The opera

As a work of theatre, Down in the Valley was more popular with audiences than certain critics, who disliked both the book and the music. They complained that Weill stitched the folk songs together with music better suited to Puccini than small-town Americans, and they felt that Sundgaard's story was pat and unrealistic. But neither Sundgaard nor Weill were aiming for verisimilitude.

Arnold Sundgaard

The story is a simple good guy vs. bad guy one, with a girl as the object of their dispute. Sundgaard, a veteran of the Federal Theatre Project, put an anti-capitalist spin on the plot by having the villain Bouché hold a lien on the family home. So the girl's father is eager to match her with him rather than her preferred suitor, Brack, even though the plot makes it clear that Bouché is no good. Poor Brack kills Bouché in self-defense, is sentenced to death, then escapes and spends his final moments of freedom with the girl, Jennie.

If that seems like a stock story line, it was meant to be. Sundgaard wrote, "Its unfolding as a tragic romance was intended to follow in extended form the shape and progression of a traditional ballad." A talented librettist and lyricist, Sundgaard worked with Douglas Moore, Alec Wilder and John Latouche in addition to Weill.

Score with Grandma Moses cover

The composer was proud of the opera, and just as proud of its success. He wrote his parents, "The critic from the [New York] Times is comparing my opera with the original Beggar's Opera, which was the source of English opera, and says that Down in the Valley will go down in history as the 'fountain head' of American opera."

Weill died thinking that he had reached a new peak in his career. Today we remember him much more for his German works and his American musicals than for Down in the Valley, which is considered a period piece - Weill's contribution to the then-popular strain of Americana.

I imagine the work is still performed today occasionally, but its popularity certainly has dimmed since these recordings were made. After the two competing LPs, to my knowledge only one recording has followed - a 1991 version from the German label Capriccio, which has issued all Weill's operas.

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