The Threepenny Opera

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.

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