What Weill and Georg Kaiser had written was part play, part opera, part parable. Set in a time of rampant market forces and decadent rich, it is the story of a reconciliation between a desperate thief and a policeman who shoots him. Then, as now, it had powerful political parallels.
I'd heard of the Weill of Mac The Knife and September Song, I enjoy opera - I'd even studied German - but the approach from Broomhill Opera to translate Silbersee came from out of the blue. They wanted me to bring this flawed masterpiece to a new audience. And so a hobby, a passion even, became an obsession.
After days head-down in dictionaries and scores the glamorous bit came at last one cold, grey January Saturday in an East End church hall. One by one, the singers turned up out of the drizzle for the auditions. Some looked like traffic wardens, others like waitresses, indeed some were waitresses. Never having been to an opera audition before, I was completely unprepared for the beautiful sounds they made. Nor was I prepared for all the camp tenors. After a while you learned to spot them: hands clasped, feet at quarter to 12, rolling imaginary boiled sweets around their mouths before arching an eyebrow and coyly flicking out a note or two to tickle the listener's fancy. Not the ideal approach if you want to be cast as a criminal.
Monday, March 1: Today we get the cast together for the first time. We finally hit on our second 'lad', a strapping six-footer who is the only person I've ever met capable of announcing he's from Sussex while implicitly asking if I want to make anything of it. We find in our criminal a terrific singer who can act, and in the policeman a terrific actor who can sing. The difficulty of finding an ensemble of actors and singers capable of performing Weill's music and Kaiser's drama is one reason why Silbersee is so rarely performed.
Tuesday, March 2: Great news. I meet the philantrophist Vivien Duffield at the topping out ceremony for the new Royal Opera House. I'd assumed her every breath was committed to Covent Garden and would not extend to us putting on an opera in an old musical hall in Stepney. Not so. She is supporting the minnows as well as the big fish. The production is now secure.
Wednesday, March 3: The publicity drive starts with an appearance on The Big Breakfast. My admiration for Johnny Vaughan is renewed when I observe him at close quarters. I have eight seconds to explain everything before they cut to a man having a pie thrown in his face.
In later interviews another disturbing phenomenon emerges. BBC TV want to use Broomhill as a stick with which to beat the toffs at the Opera House. 'Can you say, 'I'll be talking about the East End opera that puts the Royal Opera House to shame?' says the presenter. I refuse. They all want to be Paxman or Humphrys, and they're not. Hence the half-baked and aggressive attempts to make every story controversial: 'Do you really think people in the East End want to go to the opera?' the presenter asks, making a patronising assumption about a whole community.
At GLR it gets worse. 'What is it with you showbiz types and opera?' sneers the presenter, 'Harry Enfield keeps banging on about it, Sir Elton's doing Aida, I mean it's just a load of fat geezers singing a whole lot of nonsense, innit?' There is in our media what Lord Justice Macpherson might call institutionalised philistinism, a reverse snobbery that implies that an interest in art makes you a toff while an encyclopaedic knowledge of Arsenal makes you a good bloke.
Meanwhile, back at beautiful, battered old Wilton's Music Hall, there's been a break-in. A thief raiding a theatre putting on a play about a thief. Maybe he was auditioning.
Friday, March 5: I sit in on rehearsals for the first time. I'd intended to be on hand to amend the script but the logistics of it all got on top of me. Rehearsals are extremely demanding, like a four-hour board meeting spent sifting every line with breaks every ten minutes for charades.
Sunday, March 7: It's been a desperate weekend. I realise I've become obsessed with the project. I wake every day with a headache, hear the songs in my head at night and spend much of each day on the verge of tears. My concentration's gone, my scalp's inflamed and I'm finding it hard to breathe.
After standing in a queue at the deli for ten minutes, unable to get served and acutely embarrassed that people are pointing and staring, I flee into the night. My girlfriend found me curled up into a ball on the kitchen floor wailing to myself. I've either got to get this work completed or check into a clinic.
Monday, March 8: Feeling better. Finished amendments to four songs. The cast arrive for rehearsals, and I get a glimpse of life as a classical singer. One guy left Paris at 5.30am after a concert in Strasbourg. Another has flown back from Oslo. A third leaves early to attend a dress rehearsal in Glasgow. I tell them I've came from as far away as Fulham.
Wednesday, March 10: Sixteen years after my last tutorial, I'm back with Professor John White at King's College London, the man who taught me everything I've forgotten about Kafka. After the vast amounts of bullshit that accompany any career in the media, it's great to roll the sleeves up and get into a place of work with a wise and rigorous academic. A Georg Kaiser specialist, the professor tolerates my ideas, before flagging up a problem here, a reference there, a literary association there. I go home buzzing.
Wednesday, March 17: Worrying call from my agent. The publishers want me to sign away my rights for the translation for the princely sum of 5p. Much as I might argue that it's worth at least a quid, there's a danger we won't get the licence if I kick up a fuss. As it is, the orchestra parts are apparently under round-the clock guard in Tunbridge Wells, the library being under strict instructions not to release anything to us until I've signed my life away. This looks serious.
I veer between submission and elemental rage before someone comes up with a Third Way - we seek a licence purely for this production. I've done this project very much for love, and having to sign away without even a writer's credit seemed very unfair. A glimpse maybe into the abyss of life as a writer/translator, 'Yes, we got your script. Thank you - now piss off.' Meanwhile, Bloomberg have donated £5,000 and after an embarrassing appeal made at the end of the 1999 Kitchen And Bathroom Awards, I think I've found someone who can put some heating in. No longer will Wilton's be The World's Coldest Music Hall.
Friday, March 26: The cast are finally rehearsing in the theatre. Today I will hear the first orchestra to play in Wilton's Music Hall for 100 years. The excitement and tension are almost tangible. However, seeing the state of the theatre, I begin to think we might not make it on time. The designers are working around the clock, and we've even persuaded the heating suppliers to put in the heaters in a day.
As the actors go through their paces I wonder how they will cope? Will they remember their lines? Will they take the place by storm? Of course they will. And in any case, there's nothing I can do, it's theirs now. Theirs, and Kaiser's and Weill's...
Silbersee opens at Wilton's Music Hall (off Ensign Street, London E1) on Thursday. Bookings: 0171-420 0000.
