Kurt Weill was born in Dessau in 1900 and his prodigious talent was evident from an early age. By the mid-1920s he had arrived in Berlin and had established himself as a musical- theatre and opera composer, his first full-length work Der Protagonist (The Protagonist) was performed in April 1926.

His collaborations with Bertolt Brecht would cement his reputation as one of the finest musical-theatre composers of his generation.

He fled Berlin firstly for Paris in 1933, and then two years later to the United States, where he remarried his wife Lotte Lenya and became a US citizen.

Over the next decade, he would become one of the mainstays of American musical theatre and be lauded for his ability to adapt work for any audience and collaborate with a diverse range of playwrights and lyricists.

He died of a heart attack on April 3rd 1950, leaving behind a vast catalogue of work.

His obituary describes him as “the most original single workman in the whole musical theater, internationally considered, during the last quarter century”.