Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera)
by Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, Music by Kurt Weillby Bertolt Brecht in collaboration with Elisabeth Hauptmann, Music by Kurt Weill
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Under the indifferent moon of Soho, London’s underworld attempts to arrest Mack the Knife with songs and words that are polished as sharp as his own blade. With »The Threepenny Opera« (world premiere 1928), Brecht, Hauptmann and Weill created an entirely new form of music theatre. A play about a society in which everything is reduced to its monetary value and criminals are citizens – and vice versa.
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The forthcoming celebrations for the Queen’s coronation allow Jonathan and Celia Peachum, owners of the emporium »The Beggar’s Friend«, to hope for good business, as they hand out begging licences to the needy and pocket at least fifty per cent of the profits. This is sorely needed as trade is slow these days and compassion is in short supply. Their daughter Polly’s secret marriage to Macheath, nicknamed Mack the Knife and the leader of a gang of robbers, fills her industrious parents with little enthusiasm. They had treated their child as an investment and envisaged her in finer and above all wealthier circles. Without further ado, the Peachums decide to have Mack the Knife hanged – literally. A trail of betrayal, jealousy, bribery and unpaid debts leads through London’s underworld to put a stop to Macheath’s game and deliver him to the gallows.
»… but man is brutal, his gifts are sparing and
charity is rare upon this star.«
Based on John Gay’s Baroque opera pastiche »The Beggar’s Opera«, first performed in London in 1728, Bertolt Brecht, Elisabeth Hauptmann and Kurt Weill created a radically new form of music theatre. Given its world premiere in1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, »The Threepenny Opera« presents a world in which everything – be it love, sympathy or crime – has a monetary price and is valued accordingly. For some people »food comes first, morals follow on«, while others are too busy eating to have any morals at all.
Philipp Stölzl, acclaimed for his character-focussed direction and poetic stage designs, directs Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s masterpiece at the Residenztheater.
