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 sins. Also known as hubris (from ancient Greek ), or futility, it is identified as dangerously corrupt selfishness, the putting of one's own desires, urges, wants, and whims before the welfare of other people. In even more destructive cases, it is irrationally believing that one is essentially and necessarily better, superior, or more important than others, failing to acknowledge the accomplishments of others, and excessive admiration of the personal image or self (especially forgetting one's own lack of divinity, and refusing to acknowledge one's own limits, faults, or wrongs as a human being). As pride has been labelled the father