A re-release of a record that I already have. This time they managed to add a piece called Berlin Theatre Songs to the same two records. Again the main role of Jenny is played by Lotte Lenya. Lenya was married to Kurt Weill, so she knew how to sing the repertoire. However, at the time of the recording, she was not always able to sing all the parts she was meant to sing. Instead she sometimes reverted to a way of spoken voice that is in German called Sprechstimme, or in a lower register. She was born in 1898, so she was nearing her sixties at the time of the recording.
Her relationship with Kurt Weill was very unstable: she had a string of lovers. The couple divorced, and she married two homosexuals in a row. Then she married a TV critic but never lived with him. She died in 1981 at the age of 83, and is burried next to Kurt Weill. I hope they’re not arguing too much there.
Film lovers might know her from a role in the James Bond movie From Russia with love, when she played the main antagonist. Not the Bond girl, mind, but the evil mastermind Rosa Klebb.