Weill's Musical Theater is one of the first scholarly examinations of the German composer's complete works for the stage. Meticulously researched and offering abundant references, the book also engages with Kurt Weill's sources, reception, reviews and existing critical studies. The study includes both methodological explorations (‘Biographical Notes’ and ‘The Busoni Connection’) and conceptual analyses (‘Concept and Commitment’ and ‘Coda’) of Weill's musical theatre. It also presents detailed, genre-specific investigations of Weill's musical works in various ‘stages of reform’, ranging from ‘One-Act Operas’, ‘Songspiel’, ‘Plays with Music’, ‘Epic Opera’ and ‘Didactic Theater (Lehrstück)’ to Broadway musicals (‘Stages of Exile’, ‘Musical Plays’ and ‘American Opera’) and film-opera (‘Stage vs. Screen’).

This comprehensive study shows how the composer achieved fruitful results through ambitious experiments and productive interaction with a wide range of playwrights, especially Georg Kaiser, Bertolt Brecht, Moss Hart, Alan Jay Lerner and Maxwell Anderson. For example, Weill collaborated with Brecht in a number of music stage works, especially the ‘play with music’ Threepenny Opera and the ‘epic opera’ Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. The critical analysis of the two collaborators’ relationship plays a particularly important role in Hinton's research and provides illuminating insights. It contrasts Weill's insistence on giving ‘the links between the musical numbers a form that obstructs as little as possible the musical design of the whole’ (p. 145) with Brecht's view of inscriptions as a significant innovation in his epic theatre. Hinton points out that Weill's expediency in using inscriptions to connect the music with ‘boring’ dialogues inspired or even provoked Brecht to use music as an epic tool to contrast with text and to interrupt dramatic illusion and unity.

While the study generally proceeds in a chronological order, it employs a broad, interdisciplinary and inclusive approach to Weill's work. It engages with numerous critiques and perspectives, and applies methodologies ranging from biographical to dramaturgical, offering both musicological and theatrical analyses. By carefully documenting the continuity of the experiments that Weill carried out in his musical theatre in Europe and the United States, this book succeeds in assessing the work of one of the key reformers of twentieth-century musical theatre.

Tables, endnotes, photographs and illustrations of musical scenes from Weill's stage works support Hinton's outstanding scholarship. The study provides an extensive index of terms, events and authors – along with their works, views and relationships with others. As such, this book is indispensable reading for music professionals and graduate students, and it is also highly recommended for anyone interested in musical theatre.