Question: The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper ) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, adapted from which of John Gay's English ballad opera in three acts, written in 1728?

Context paragraphs:
Captain Macheath: Captain Macheath is a fictional character who appears both in John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" (1728), its sequel "Polly" (1777), and roughly 200 years later in Bertolt Brecht's "The Threepenny Opera".

The Threepenny Opera: The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper ) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, adapted from John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, "The Beggar's Opera", with music by Kurt Weill and insertion ballads by François Villon and Rudyard Kipling.  Although Hauptmann produced 80 to 90 percent of the text, Brecht suppressed this and assumed sole credit, and is usually listed as sole author in printed versions.

The Beggar's Opera: The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch.  It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today.  Ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative.  The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time.

What Keeps Mankind Alive?: "What Keeps Mankind Alive?"  is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama "The Threepenny Opera" ("Die Dreigroschenoper ") which premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.  The title refers to the central line from the finale of act 2, "Denn wovon lebt der Mensch? " .  In the opera, the two stanzas of the strophic piece are sung by Macheath and Mrs Peachum and the final line is sung in fortissimo by the chorus.

Round Heads and Pointed Heads: Round Heads and Pointed Heads (German: "Die Rundköpfe und die Spitzköpfe" ) is an epic parable play written by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, in collaboration with Margarete Steffin, Emil Burri, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and the composer Hanns Eisler.  The play's subtitle is "Money Calls to Money" and its authors describe it as "a tale of horror."  The play is a satirical anti-Nazi parable about a fictitious country called Yahoo in which the rulers maintain their control by setting the people with round heads against those with pointed heads, thereby substituting racial relations for their antagonistic class relations.  The play is composed of 11 scenes in prose and blank verse and 13 songs.  Unlike another of Brecht's plays from this period, "The Mother", "Round Heads and Pointed Heads" was addressed to a wide audience, Brecht suggested, and took account of "purely entertainment considerations."  Brecht's notes on the play, written in 1936, contain the earliest theoretical application of his "defamiliarization" principle to his own "non-Aristotelian" drama.

The Threepenny Opera (1931 film): The Threepenny Opera (German: Die 3 Groschen-Oper ) is a 1931 German musical film directed by G. W. Pabst.  It was produced by Seymour Nebenzal's Nero-Film for Tonbild-Syndikat AG (Tobis), Berlin and Warner Bros.  Pictures GmbH, Berlin.  The film is loosely based on the 1928 musical theatre success "The Threepenny Opera" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.  As was usual in the early sound film era, Pabst also directed a French language version of the film, "L'Opéra de quat'sous", with some variation of plot details (the French title literally translates as "the four penny opera").  A planned English version was not made.  The two existing versions were released by The Criterion Collection on home video.

Saint Joan of the Stockyards: Saint Joan of the Stockyards (German: "Die Heilige Johanna der Schlachthöfe" ) is a play written by the German modernist playwright Bertolt Brecht between 1929 and 1931, after the success of his musical "The Threepenny Opera" and during the period of his radical experimental work with the "Lehrstücke".  It is based on the musical that he co-authored with Elisabeth Hauptmann, "Happy End" (1929).  In this version of the story of Joan of Arc, Brecht transforms her into "Joan Dark", a member of the "Black Straw Hats" (a Salvation Army-like group) in 20th-century Chicago.  The play charts Joan's battle with Pierpont Mauler, the unctuous owner of a meat-packing plant.  Like her predecessor, Joan is a doomed woman, a martyr and (initially, at least) an innocent in a world of strike-breakers, fat cats, and penniless workers.  Like many of Brecht's plays it is laced with humor and songs as part of its epic dramaturgical structure and deals with the theme of emancipation from material suffering and exploitation.

Berliner Ensemble: The Berliner Ensemble (] ) is a German theatre company established by playwright Bertolt Brecht and his wife, Helene Weigel in January 1949 in East Berlin.  In the time after Brecht's exile, the company first worked at Wolfgang Langhoff's Deutsches Theater and in 1954 moved to the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, built in 1892, that was open for the 1928 premiere of "The Threepenny Opera" ("Die Dreigroschenoper").

Mack the Knife: "Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama "Die Dreigroschenoper", or, as it is known in English, "The Threepenny Opera".  It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.  The song has become a popular standard recorded by many artists, including a US and UK number one hit for Bobby Darin in 1959.

Margo Lion (cabaret singer): Marguerite Hélène Barbe Elisabeth Constantine Lion (28 February 1899 – 24 February 1989), known as Margo Lion, was a French chanteuse, parodist, cabaret singer and actress, best known for her role as Pirate Jenny in director G.W. Pabst's 1931 French language adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's "Threepenny Opera" ("Die Dreigroschenoper").

Supporting paragraphs: The Threepenny Opera The Beggar's Opera
Answer: The Beggar's Opera