Autorentext

Bertolt Brecht, translated by Ralph Manheim and John Willett

Klappentext

One of Bertolt Brecht's best-loved and most performed plays, The Threepenny Opera was first staged in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin (now the home of the Berliner Ensemble). Based on the eighteenth-century The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, the play is a satire on the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic, but set in a mock-Victorian Soho. With Kurt Weill's music, which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce the jazz idiom into the theatre, it became a popular hit throughout the western world. This new edition is published here in John Willett and Ralph Manhein's classic translation with commentary and notes by Anja Hartl.

Inhalt

Chronology

Contexts

• Historical, social and cultural
• Political and social climate of the 1920s
• Cultural context: the Roaring '20s
• Significance of the play for Brecht and for political theatre
• 18th century context
• 20th century context

• Britain vs. Germany; London/East London

  Genres

• Opera/music/theatre a new theatrical genre
• Adaptation John Gay, The Beggar's Opera
• Hybridity: low- and highbrow, emphasis on fun, entertainment in Brechtian theatre

• Satire

  Themes

• Who is who? Bourgeois and/or beggar?
• Role of the institutions (police, royal family, state)
• Corruption, money
• Exploitation, human trade, poverty
• Morality, asocial vs. social
• Love and sexuality, prostitution
• Resistance and change

• Which opportunities for change are envisioned by the play?

  Characters
  Male characters

• Peachum empire
• Macheath
• Tigerbrown
  Female characters and sexual politics of the play
• Mrs Peachum
• Polly

• Jenny

  Play as performance

• Brechtian principles of theatre-making
  > emphasis on dialectical theatre
  > theatricality
  > actor-audience relationship
  > deus-ex-machina ending

• Music

  Kurt Weill's composition
  Brechtian opera
  The significance of the songs

  Academic debate

• Central strands in scholarship (comparative readings, focus on music and operatic genre)

  Production history

• German productions (Berliner Ensemble; new production announced for January 2021)
• English productions
• International success (and problems which ensued: misinterpretation, commercialisation, etc.)
• Der Dreigroschenprozess (The Threepenny Trial by Bertolt Brecht)
• Simon Stephens's recent new version at the National Theatre, UK

• Joachim Lang's film Mackie Messer Brechts Dreigroschenfilm

  Behind the scenes
  Interview with playwright Simon Stephens

  Further reading and viewing

  THE THREEPENNY OPERA

  Additional texts

  Notes