Lenya, Lotte, 1898-1981, Viennese singer and character actress, b. Karoline Blamauer. The wife of the composer Kurt Weill, Lenya was the foremost singer of his songs. She and Weill fled Germany in 1933 to work in the United States, where she appeared in The Threepenny Opera (as Jenny, a role she created in Berlin), Brecht on Brecht, Mahagonny, and Cabaret. Lenya has also made recordings and films (including The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, 1961, and From Russia with Love, 1963).

orig. Karoline Blamauer

(born Oct. 18, 1900, Penzing, Austria—died Nov. 27, 1981, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Austrian-born U.S. actress-singer. Born into poverty, Lenya worked as a dancer and actress in Zürich and later in Berlin. She married the composer Kurt Weill in 1926 and began appearing in musical dramas by Weill and his longtime collaborator Bertolt Brecht, such as Mahagonny (1927) and The Threepenny Opera (1928; film, 1930). Lenya and Weill fled Nazi Germany for Paris, where she sang in Brecht's and Weill's Seven Deadly Sins (1933). The couple moved to New York City in 1935, and Lenya made her U.S. debut in The Eternal Road (1937). After Weill's death, she lent her inimitably husky voice to revivals throughout the 1950s, including a long-running production of The Threepenny Opera, and she later performed in Brecht on Brecht (1962), Mother Courage and Her Children (1965), and Cabaret (1966), as well as in films.

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