Bertolt Brecht - Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar (LITERA, 1965, vinyl rip)

"Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar" is a short play by Bertolt Brecht, written in 1937 in the first year of the Spanish Civil War, which provides the background. It was intended for performance by a German troupe in Paris. Acknowledgement is made to an idea in J. M. Synge's "Riders to the Sea".

Teresa Carrar, who lives in an Andalusian fisherman's cottage, has lost her husband and fears for her sons Juan and José. For this reason she adopts a neutral attitude and hides her husband's rifles; she refuses to surrender them to her brother Pedro Jaquéras, who intends to join the fight against the fascist generals. José struggles with his mother and injures her foot. Juan's body is carried into the cottage on the sail of his boat. He has been shot while out fishing, because for the fascists the worker's cap that Juan wears when he goes fishing is a sufficient reason for shooting him as a suspected red. Those aren't human beings, Señora Carrar concludes, That's leprosy, and it has to be eradicated. She hands out the rifles that she had hidden from the fascist forces, and together with her younger son she herself heads for the front. The character of the Padre, who shares the suffering of the hungry and prays for them but does nothing to help them get their daily bread, is introduced by Brecht as a criticism of the Church's passive and appeasing attitude towards General Franco.

This recording of "Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar" with Helene Weigel, Ekkehard Schall, Erw
in Geschonneck and others is based on an radio play of the Berliner Rundfunkt from January, 1953.

Bertolt Brecht - Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar (1965, vinyl rip)
(192 kbps, front cover included)