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The Threepenny Opera, the first major product of his work with Weill, was written and premiered in 1928. It occupies a central position in this phase in Brecht’s career, a phase of particular importance in Brecht’s shift to Marxism. Accordingly, The Threepenny Opera has tended to be seen as a transitional work, not only in terms of Brecht ...
The Threepenny Opera [a] (Die Dreigroschenoper [diː dʁaɪˈɡʁɔʃn̩ˌʔoːpɐ]) is a 1928 German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, [1] and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution ...
- Online Opera Guide and Synopsis to Weill’s and Brecht’s Threepenny Opera
- The Social Criticism
- The Original and The “Copy” Became A Sensation
- An Ambivalent Triumph
- The Music of The Threepenny Opera
- The Epic Theatre and The Alienation Effect
- The Work Had Many Fathers and Mothers
- Mack’s Famous Moritat – Mac The Knife
- The Moon Over Soho
- Lotte Lenya
The genesis of the Threepenny Opera was dramatic. Everyone expected a failure. But the premiere on August 31, 1928 became an unexpected triumphant success and made Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht all of a sudden famous. Weill’s melodies became popular and the work was performed 10.000 times alone in the first 5 years. Content ♪ Synopsis ♪ Commentary ...
The work is a product of the Berlin “roaring twenties”. Jazz, Art déco and the desire for pleasure characterized these years. But also the horrors of the Great War and their consequences such as hyperinflation, organized crime, misery and mentally and physically shattered victims were still omnipresent. The thirty-year-old Bertold Brecht was a Marx...
The basis for the Threepenny Opera was an existing work. Brecht freely adapted the plot of John Gay’s “Beggar’s opera”. Exactly 200 years earlier Gay had teased in London against the pomp of Handel’s baroque operas. Instead of playing in the milieu of the nobility as in a Handel opera, Gay let the plot take place in the whore and beggar milieu of t...
The preparations for the opera were overshadowed by deaths, cancellations and illness of involved persons. Everyone expected failure. But the premiere on August 31, 1928 became an unexpected triumphant success and made Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht suddenly famous. Weill’s melodies became popular and the work was performed 10.000 times in the first...
The Threepenny Opera was Weill’s second work in collaboration with Bert Brecht after “Mahoganny”. Weill’s opera work was already dominated by themes of contemporary criticism, his compositional style was rich in effects and enriched with jazz elements. With the Threepenny Opera, his artistry reached a magnificent climax at the young age of 28. Weil...
The Threepenny Opera departs from the conventional approach of musical drama, which we know from the genre of opera. Brecht demanded of the composer and the performing artists not to interpret the scenes psychologically, but to interpret them socio-politically. The actor must not be absorbed in the role. Consequently, it was not the emphatic opera ...
In addition to the authors of the original form (Gray and Pepusch) and the modern form (Brecht and Weill), Elisabeth Hauptmann, who wrote many texts as a translator of Beggar’s Opera, and Klammer, who translated poems by Francois Villon (chosen by Brecht), must be mentioned. The latter led to a copyright lawsuit by Klammer, which later forced Brech...
Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne (Ballad of Mac the Knife) A “Moritat” (probably coming from the word “murderous deed” or “morality”) was a horror ballad that was sung at fairs and the singer was accompanied by violins or barrel organs. From the beginning, the Moritat became a popular song par excellence and the most famous piece of the Threepenny O...
This number is a wonderful caricature of conventional opera. While we experience magical full moon nights at Bellini’s Norma (and many other operas) Weill’s moon over Soho is a grotesque grimace in the night sky. Anstatt, dass … Das ist der Mond über Soho (No They Can’t Song) Weill deliberately wrote this choir song with a lot of wrong notes. The c...
This ballad of the pirate-Jenny was originally intended for the figure of Polly. But due to the great success of Lotte Lenya (the first Jenny) it was subsequently given to this figure. Lotte Lenya (bourgeois Charlotte Blamauer) was not only the premiere Jenny, but also the wife of Kurt Weill. She also sang this role in the first film adaptation of ...
The Threepenny Opera is set in London at the dawn of the Victorian era, just before the coronation of a new queen who is never named, but who is understood to be Victoria herself. The Victorian era, roughly consisting of the period between 1837 and 1901 was marked by progressivism and innovation, but also by social and political strife: the industrial revolution, British imperial expansion ...
Oct 19, 2018 · The joy of this production is that it offers a vigorous new take on Brecht’s musical with sharply defined performances and a vibrant on-stage band. Though the play is prefaced with a warning that “there will be no moralising tonight”, SLAM’s revival of The Threepenny Opera speaks to social problems of abuse and poverty, offering a ...
As part of the Travelex £15 season, this dark but frequently amusing and socially aware version of The Threepenny Opera is definitely worth a try, both for some good central performances and an opportunity to get a better understanding of the work and theory of one of 20 th-century theatre's defining figures, Bertolt Brecht.
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To that end, as The Threepenny Opera amply demonstrates, Brecht took an established form—the comic melodrama—and inverted it, examining the cultural and moral values that made it work.
