THE THREEPENNY OPERA
Publié le 22/02/2012
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THE THREEPENNY OPERA (Die Dreigroschenoper). In 1928 the new
intendant of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Ernst-Josef Aufricht, chanced
upon Elisabeth Hauptmann's translation of The Beggar's Opera. Originally written
in 1728 by John Gay, the work had recently enjoyed a two-year run on the
London stage. With support from Erich Engel,* Aufricht convinced Bertolt
Brecht* and Kurt Weill* to reconstruct Hauptmann's draft as a musical play. In
under six months Brecht and Weill wrote Die Dreigroschenoper and staged its
first performance on 31 August 1928 with Weill's wife Lotte Lenya in the cast.
Arriving on the Berlin* stage when middle-class audiences were acceptant of
sociopolitical satire, The Threepenny Opera ran for about a year. It was subsequently
staged throughout the world and remains Germany's most successful
theatrical work of the twentieth century. Advancing Brecht's formula of ‘‘meat
first, morality after,'' the play sets its action among thieves and beggars in
London's underworld. The authors envisaged the plot, which revolves around
the philanderings of the criminal Macheath, as ideal for maligning romantic
opera, in which the audience's entertainment comes from identifying with the
shallow emotions of the stage characters.
The Threepenny Opera, filmed in 1931 by G. W. Pabst,* is esteemed as the
prime example of Weimar ‘‘political theater.'' Yet, when it appeared in 1928,
it was critiqued as ‘‘bourgeois flippancy'' in the KPD's Rote Fahne. Apparently,
Brecht only rendered the play's deeper meaning in retrospect. Perhaps more
radical than its content was the play's relationship to form and structure. Combining
cabaret* songs, the use of projections, modern dance rhythms (e.g.,
tango), operatic standards, and a dance band in place of an orchestra, the authors
achieved something that was avant-garde, instructive, fun, and compelling, all
at the same time.
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