First Complete Recording of Kurt Weill And Alan Jay Lerner’s LOVE LIFE Released on Capriccio Records

The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music has announced the release on Capriccio Records of the first complete recording of Love Life, the groundbreaking Broadway collaboration between Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner.

The album captures a live performance of Opera North’s acclaimed production, recently named one of six finalists for Best Production of Musical Theater at the 2025 International Opera Awards.

The Chorus and Orchestra of Opera North are conducted by James Holmes, one of the world’s leading Weill interpreters. The cast features Quirijn de Lang, Stephanie Corley, Themba Mvula, and Justin Hopkins. The release includes an extensive 90-page booklet with full libretto, cast biographies, and essays by Joel Galand and Kim Kowalke.

A labor strike during the original 1948 Broadway run prevented the release of a cast album, leaving Love Life without a recording for more than seven decades. Despite this, its influence endured: designer Boris Aronson—later known for Cabaret and Sondheim-Prince collaborations—called the show “a forerunner of today’s so-called concept musical,” while Stephen Sondheim credited it as “a useful influence on my own work.”

Conductor James Holmes noted, “Weill gives full vent to his considerable powers of musical storytelling across the show’s vast variety of musical styles. Ahead of its time in 1948 in the way it told its story, Love Life is firmly of our time in what it tells.”

The recording employs a new critical edition of the score, prepared by Joel Galand for the Kurt Weill Edition, which earned top honors from both the Music Publishers Association of the USA and the American Musicological Association. The accompanying vocal score also received a Paul Revere Award for Graphic Excellence.

Reflecting on the release, Kim Kowalke, President and CEO of the Kurt Weill Foundation, said, “One of my goals since accepting Lotte Lenya’s request that I succeed her as president has been to see Love Life fully published, brilliantly performed, and recorded in toto. Now that it has been, I am reminded of Ira Gershwin’s line, ‘Who could ask for anything more?’ Well, perhaps future productions as imaginative and compelling as the one recorded here.”

A video release is also being planned.