Telluride Chamber Music meets "Cabaret," 8/20

The 37th annual Telluride Chamber Music Festival meets “Cabaret.” The event takes place Friday, August 20, 7:30 p.m. at the historic Sheridan Opera House. In keeping with the decadence of the period in Germany before the rise of Hitler, the evening begins with a champagne reception and ends with sweets. Guests are asked to come in costume, although Telluride chic works just fine for the aristos in the crowd.

The culture of Germany’s Weimar Republic, 1918-1933, encompassed the political caricature of Otto Dix and George Grosz, the beginnings of the far-reaching Bauhaus movement in architecture and interior design and the decadent cabaret culture of Berlin, documented by Christopher Isherwood in “Goodbye to Berlin,” the book that became the musical “Cabaret.” Cabarets, concert halls and conservatories performed the atonal and modern music of Alban Berg, Arnold Schoenberg, and Kurt Weill, like the other arts, declared decadent under the Reich.

Chanteuse Erin Neff of the San Francisco Opera is the Telluride Chamber Music Festival’s Sally Bowles, turning her mezzo-soprano trills and thrills to the music of Weill, Schoenberg, Hans Eisler, and their ilk, while doing spot-on impersonations of the likes of Marlene Dietrich.

Oh, and Neff may arrive in style on her motorcycle. The opera star is also a bike chick.

To learn more, click the “play” button and listen to Erin’s interview.