Lotte Lenya

Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer on 18 October 1898 in Vienna) was an Austrian‑American singer, diseuse, and actress whose career spanned nearly six decades, from the cabarets of Weimar‑era Berlin to Hollywood screenplays of the 1960s. She first attracted the attention of composer Kurt Weill in 1922 during an audition for his early stage score Zaubernacht, although she declined the part out of loyalty to her voice coach. Her breakthrough arrived in 1928 when she originated the role of Jenny in The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper), a performance that would define her artistic identity and cement her reputation as the definitive interpreter of Weill’s songs. Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s she appeared in numerous German films and stage productions, often collaborating with playwright Bertolt Brecht, and she made several landmark recordings of Weill’s music. The rise of Nazism forced Lenna to leave Germany despite not being Jewish; she spent a brief exile in Paris where she sang the lead in Brecht‑Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins before emigrating to the United States with Weill in September 1935. In New York she became a fixture of both Broadway and the emerging American cabaret scene, starring in the English adaptation of The Threepenny Opera that earned her a Tony Award in 1956—the only off‑Broadway performance ever so honored. After Weill’s death in 1950 she continued to champion his legacy, founding the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and supervising the rights to his works. Her film career blossomed in the 1960s with a Academy‑Award‑nominated turn as the aristocratic Contessa Magda Terribili‑Gonzales in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and the iconic portrayal of SMERSH agent Rosa Klebb in the James Bond classic From Russia with Love (1963). In 1966 she originated the role of Fräulein Schneider in the original Broadway production of Cabaret, further linking her artistic lineage to the Weill‑inspired score of Kander and Ebb. Lenna’s personal life was equally colorful: she married Kurt Weill (twice), editor George Davis, artist Russell Detwiler, and critic Richard Siemanowski, and despite several tumultuous relationships she never bore children. Lotte Lenya died of cancer in Manhattan on 27 November 1981 at the age of 83, and she was interred beside Weill at Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York. Her legacy endures through the Lotte Lenya Competition, numerous recordings, and a lasting influence on both European cabaret and American musical theater.