Odysseus almost makes it to broadway: TheUlysses Africanus of Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson

Abstract

Between the end of 1938 and the beginning of 1939, Kurt Weill and Maxwell Anderson began working together on a musical comedy entitledUlysses Africanus, which was intended to be performed on Broadway. The play tells anOdyssey-like story set in the aftermath of the American Civil War. Various problems attended attempts to stage the play, and the project was eventually abandoned. Weill and Anderson later mined the play for elements of plot and several songs that were subsequently incorporated intoLost in the Stars, their best know work. While several scholars have studied the music originally written for the play, no one has yet studied its relationship to theOdyssey. While in no sense a masterpiece of dramatic art,Ulyasses Africanus—if more widely known—would certainly win a modest place among twentieth-century works influenced by Homer’sOdyssey.