Tags: Berlin

Cabaret

As the Nazis begin their rise to power in Germany in the late 1920s, an American writer visits the sleazy Kit Kat Klub in Berlin and meets an English singer, Sally Bowles. The writer and singer soon fall in love. His elderly landlady gets engaged to a Jewish greengrocer despite the increasing influence of the Nazis. He has been inadvertently helping the Nazis by delivering packages to Paris for a German friend of his and ends up deciding to return to the United States, while Sally, after aborting their baby, decides to remain in Berlin.

Dancing on a Volcano: A Berlin Kabarett

Angelina Réaux, actress and classical singer, created A Berlin Kabarett with music by composers who were either lost in the Holocaust, forced into exile, or silenced by the Nazis. Réaux, together with Dr. Alan Lareau, an expert on Berlin cabaret and professor of German at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, undertook painstaking research all over Europe to uncover these songs, which they eventually discovered in the form of old sheet music and manuscripts hidden in publisher archives, Berlin libraries, and family attics. Originally performed in Berlin clubs before the outbreak of World War II, kabarett was a way to express anti-Third Reich sentiment and became an enormously popular form of entertainment. The majority of German cabaret music was destroyed by the Nazis, but the surviving songs are brought to life by Réaux in her cabaret performance.

The Sparks Fly Upward

The Sparks Fly Upward is a musical drama that follows three German families in Berlin, two Jewish and one Christian, through the Holocaust. Between 1938 and the end of the war in 1945, the families struggle to outlast Hitler. At times the families turn to the Book of Job for diversion, reassurance and enlightenment. Job’s suffering, and the contest between good and evil represented in his story, are reflected in the lives of the characters, who boldly face the question of man’s obligation to man in times of moral and political crisis.

The Yellow Star [Der Gelbe Stern]

Der Gelbe Stern brings to life the cabaret shows of Weimar Berlin before the outbreak of World War II. Erika Stern, a Jewish cabaret entertainer, makes her last performance before the Nazi regime puts an end to this racy, provocative and often satirical art form. Includes songs from the Weimar cabaret era.