The Seven Deadly Sins (ballet chanté) to compose "Die sieben Todsünden" by Edward James, a wealthy Englishman who had been in Paris during Weill's visit in December 1932. James's wife, Tilly Losch, was a ballerina who James described as having a striking resemblance to Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya. Because James knew that Weill was going to write for Lenya, he included language in the contract commissioning the work requiring that his wife, Losch, dance opposite her lookalike. This dictated the complicated split personality plot before Bertolt Brecht was even asked to write the libretto. "The Seven Deadly Sins" premiered in the "Théatre des Champs-Elysées" in Paris
Seven deadly sins person . . . who, for a morsel of meat sold his birthright." We learn that "he found no place for repentance, though he sought it carefully, with tears." Greed (Latin, ), also known as avarice, cupidity, or covetousness, is, like lust and gluttony, a sin of desire. However, greed (as seen by the Church) is applied to an artificial, rapacious desire and pursuit of material possessions. Thomas Aquinas wrote, "Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of temporal things." In Dante's Purgatory, the penitents