Theodor Adorno famously proclaimed that the model of Kurt Weill's music could not be repeated. Weill's works for the stage nevertheless set an inescapable precedent for composers on both sides of the Atlantic. In Weill, Blitzstein, Bernstein, distinguished musicologist Rebecca Schmid explores how Weill's formal innovations laid the groundwork for the musical theatre of Marc Blitzstein and Leonard Bernstein, who either resisted or downplayed his aesthetic contribution to the American musical tradition. Comparative analysis based on Harold Bloom's Anxiety of Influence and other studies of intertextuality reveal that the principles of Weill's operatic reforms would catalyze a uniquely American movement in sophisticated, socially engaged music theatre.
