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 by laziness, but by a state of depression that caused spiritual detachment. Vainglory (Latin, ) is unjustified boasting. Pope Gregory viewed it as a form of pride, so he folded "vainglory" into pride for his listing of sins. According to Thomas Aquinas, it is the progenitor of envy. The Latin term "gloria" roughly means "boasting", although its English cognate – "glory" – has come to have an exclusively positive meaning; historically, the term "vain" roughly meant "futile" (a meaning retained in the modern expression "in vain"), but by the 14th century had come to have the strong narcissistic undertones, that