Theater

Fresh Air's classical music critic Lloyd Schwartz reviews a new DVD release of a lesser-known Kurt Weill opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahoganny.

The Threepenny Opera revolutionized musical theater. Playwright and lyricist Bertolt Brecht, composer Kurt Weill and actress Lotte Lenya created a sensation when their show opened in Berlin in 1928.

Two years later, the great German director G.W. Pabst turned it into a movie, and it's just been released as a Criterion Collection DVD.

Beverly Sills, the Brooklyn-born opera star with the charming smile and the clean, silvery coloratura, died Monday at the age of 78. Fresh Air's classical music critic pays tribute.

She was a home-grown phenomenon, an operatic soprano trained entirely in the U.S. in an era when most singers developed their craft in Europe, and she made a notable second career after her retirement as a formidable arts administrator and advocate. Fresh Air spoke with her in 1985.

Singer Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, who helped bridge '50s doo-wop and '60s rock 'n' roll, are celebrated in a new four-CD box set called Jersey Beat. The group released two dozen Top 40 hits, including "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Sherry" and "Walk Like a Man." Jersey Boys, the Tony Award winning Broadway musical, is based on the lives of the Four Seasons.

As artistic director of the Encores series at New York's City Center, Jack Viertel is the go-to guy for one of New York's hottest musical-theater tickets. It's just the latest phase, though, in an impressive theatrical career.

Victor Garber will star in the upcoming ABC drama Eli Stone. He has just finished a short run of Stephen Sondheim's Follies for the New York City Center's Encores! series. Viewers may remember him best as Jack Bristow on the hit TV show Alias. Broadway credits include Death Trap, Noises Off and Sweeney Todd.

Playwright and filmmaker Neil LaBute has earned a reputation for writing characters who are selfish, mean, misanthropic and misogynistic. His films include In the Company of Men and Your Friends & Neighbors. His plays include "The Mercy Seat", "Some Girls" and "Fat Pig". The New Yorker's John Lahr says his plays are "complex and unnerving," and that "there's no playwright on the planet who is writing better." "Wrecks" is LaBute's new one-man play starring Ed Harris.

We rebroadcast an interview with late mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt. She had been called the "reigning Handel diva of our day." She appeared in Peter Sellars' productions of Handel and Mozart. This interview originally aired on April 8, 1996.

On Sunday, Harry Connick Jr. will be among the nominees attending the Tony Awards. Connick received a Tony nod for best actor in a musical for his Broadway debut in the revival of The Pajama Game.

Connick has released a disc of his Broadway endeavors. The triple CD features not only recordings of the 2006 Pajama Game cast, but those from the 2001 musical he wrote, Thou Shalt Not. The latter feature duets with his Pajama Game co-star, Kelli O'Hara.