Lost in the Stars opened on Broadway at the Music Box Theatre on October 30, 1949, and closed on July 1, 1950, after 281 performances.
Directed by Jose Quintero, the cast featured Lawrence Winters (Stephen Kumalo) and Lee Charles (Leader).
(The conductor of those performances, Julius Rudel, led a 1992 complete recording of the score with the Orchestra of St. Luke's: Music Masters 01612-67100.
[5] Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, Connecticut, presented a revival in April 1986, directed by Arvin Brown.
Howard Kissel of the Daily News wrote: "The York Theatre Company has provided an enormous service by reviving Kurt Weill's 'Lost In The Stars.'
[9] In partnership with Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra and Saratoga International Theater Institute, CAP UCLA presented "Lost in the Stars" in Royce Hall on January 28 and 29, 2017.
Stephen decides to travel to Johannesburg to help his sister; he will also seek his son, Absalom, who works in the mines ("Thousands of Miles").
As Absalom is jailed, Stephen wonders how to tell his wife, Grace, and he realizes he is facing a crisis of faith ("Lost in the Stars").
[10] Weill wanted to use neither the "tom-tom" beat with which Americans were familiar nor the spirituals of the South, so he obtained recordings of Zulu music from Africa to study.
In an interview with The New York Times however, Weill noted that "American spirituals are closer to African music than many people realize."
The title song "Lost in the Stars" enjoyed a measure of popular success, and versions of it were recorded by Anita O'Day, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan, Elvis Costello, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Kurt Elling and many others.
Critic Brooks Atkinson, in his review for The New York Times wrote of the original 1949 Broadway production that Maxwell Anderson and Mr. Weill had encountered "obvious difficulty" in transforming "so thoroughly a work of literary art" into theatre, and was sometimes "skimming and literal where the novel is rich and allusive."
"[12] Robert Garland, writing in the Journal American, similarly commented that "the beauty and simplicity of Paton's book infrequently comes through."
In contrast, Atkinson felt that the music positively added to the experience of the novel: "Here, the theatre has come bearing its most memorable gifts.