The BBC broadcast premiere of Kurt Weill and Alan Jay Lerner's Love Life will air on BBC Radio 3 at 1 PM ET February 22. The program will then be available for streaming for 30 days following the initial broadcast. Listeners can tune in online here.
The broadcast will mark the radio premiere of the first full recording ever made of the 1948 musical, which was recorded by Opera North of Leeds last month. Plans have also been revealed to release the recording on CD via Capriccio, with further details to be announced.
Generally considered an early example of a concept musical, Love Life follows an ageless couple, Sam and Susan Cooper, through centuries of American history, interspersed with vaudeville acts. An American Federation of Musicians recording ban in 1948 prevented a recording from being made at the time of the premiere, and after its initial Broadway run, the musical went unrecorded, unpublished, and unperformed until a production by the University of Michigan's Musical Theatre Program in 1987, following which it continued to be produced infrequently and sporadically. A critical edition of the score was published in 2023, and it is that edition that was performed and recorded by Opera North.
The broadcast performance is conducted by James Holmes and stars baritone Quirijn de Lang and soprano Stephanie Corley as the Coopers. The cast also includes Justin Hopkins, Themba Mvula, Will Hopkins, Joshua Da Costa, Andrew Randall, Masimba Ushe, Holly Saw, Max Westwell, Tilly Baker, Louie Stow, Felicity Moore, Amber Midgley, and Lottie Gray.
The BBC broadcast comes just ahead of the upcoming City Center Encores! presentation of Love Life, directed by Victoria Clark, with musical direction by Rob Berman. The Encores! production, starring Kate Baldwin and Nicholas Christopher, will run March 26–30 at New York City Center.
