Talk:The Threepenny Opera

message: Discussions whether The Threepenny Opera is indeed an opera took place in June 2007 and January 2009. There were arguments in both directions, 3 in favour, 1 against in 2007;  4 in favour, 2 against in 2009. The arguments in favour cited several opera reference works which list it, the argument against in 2007 was that it doesn't sound like an opera and is performed in venues other than opera houses, in 2009 that a) it just isn't; b) it's an important piece of theatre history; and c) doesn't conform with OEDs definition of "opera", which I just looked up: "A dramatic musical work in which singing forms an essential part, chiefly consisting of recitatives, arias, and choruses, with orchestral accompaniment; a performance of such a work; a libretto or musical score for such a work."
Today, without discussion, one of the opponents from 2009, User:DionysosProteus, removed all opera-related categories: , edit summary: "Reordering and cats". I don't see why several classes of categories – theatre, musical theatre,opera – can't all be applied here, in part because banners for projects of those areas are on the article's talk page, and of course because of the for arguments in previous discussions. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 12:22, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Just revert. Johnbod (talk) 13:21, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm with Michael Bednarek and Johnbod on this. "No one who has actually experienced the work imagines it's an opera"? I'd like to see a source for this if it is a serious argument. Otherwise it's just WP:OR. Oxford Music Online cites Hans Keller as describing the work as follows : ‘the weightiest possible lowbrow opera for highbrows and the most full-blooded highbrow musical for lowbrows’.  If Keller can imagine it as an opera that's good enough for me. That doesn't stop it being other things as well, as course, but there is no case here for Wiki-Puritanism.  OMO also says by the way "Rather than carry the drama forward the music stops the action in its tracks in a way comparable to opera seria." So of course it should be categroized as an opera along with any other appropriate categorizations.--Smerus (talk) 17:09, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

text: What nonsense! It is always included in reference works on opera, which of course in no way precludes it being in other works on plays. Many early operas have similar forms. Johnbod (talk) 17:19, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

text: No they don't - we can't see what they say, and they are nearly all books on musicals etc claiming it as their own, as equivalent books on opera also do. Not all as RSs either. No one is asking that musicals categories are removed. Johnbod (talk) 02:55, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

text: It took me one second to find this about the work in question in The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera, by the oepra critic Rupert Christiansen.--Smerus (talk) 06:18, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I elaborated a bit on that aspect of the discussion at Talk:The Threepenny Opera, but that line seems a bit pointless to me. Opera houses perform musical theatre works quite regularly; is My Fair Lady now an opera that it's been given at the Sydney Opera House? OTOH, if a opera has never been performed at the Met etc. doesn't make them non-operas. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:34, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I never said or implied that being performed at the Met was a requisite for a work being an opera. I specifically said "" In terms of the Sydney Opera House, unlike other opera houses, it regularly stages musicals. -- Softlavender (talk) 07:59, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

text: Again, I said "major work", not "opera". Found and Lost is most definitely not a major work, having only been performed in one venue ever. Softlavender (talk) 09:05, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

text: Of course, but the serious point I was making is that a quick look at Operabase shows that Dreigroschenoper had been performed at a number of opera venues in the past two o three years alone.--Smerus (talk) 10:25, 7 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Comment. Steven Sondheim was once asked whether Sweeney Todd was an opera or a musical. His response was it depends on where its playing and who is performing it. When Sweeney is done on Broadway using musical theater performers and conventions it is a musical. When it is performed in an opera house using opera singers and opera conventions it is an opera. There are certain works that bridge both genres and what makes them fit in one genre may not be what is actually written on the page but how the work is translated in performance. The same may be true for The Threepenny Opera. I personally would choose to use both musical and opera categories for the article. Best.4meter4 (talk) 20:33, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Copied from [[Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Opera]]

message: The answer to this discussion is to create a new section in the article, 'Opera or musical', presenting the arguments on each side (and retaining all the existing classifications), without taking an assertive stand one way or the other. There is more than enough material above to enable this. If editors are willing I will attempt to write this.--Smerus (talk) 04:49, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you for proposing and offering. That would be wonderful. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 06:23, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: OK  I've added something which should satisfy everyone (famous last words...) by accentuating the ambiguity of the work's genre.--Smerus (talk) 08:51, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I like it. Thank you Smerus.4meter4 (talk) 13:28, 9 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text:  I am afraid it is quite unsatisfactory, however, giving a hopelessly biased and undue emphasis to the tiny minority of critics who describe it as an opera. That bias has been the problem all along. The current arrangement misleads any casual reader.  • DP •  {huh?} 01:18, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: As people keep telling you, a large majority of writers on opera are happy to describe it as an opera (noting differences to the norm), just as a large majority of writers on musicals are happy to describe it as a musical (noting ditto), and writers on theatre are happy to call it a play with music (noting ditto). Only you insist on an exclusivity that just isn't there. Johnbod (talk) 02:23, 11 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree with Johnbod. Many serious publications on this work describe it as an opera; see , , , , . One source goes as far as designating the work as a hybrid between opera and musical theater . Best.4meter4 (talk) 20:23, 13 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: I've just seen, in another discussion, a link to Wikipedia:Genre warrior, a new one to me. Hmmm. Johnbod (talk) 02:10, 18 September 2016 (UTC)

text: We just follow the sources - all of them, not a sample from one specialism. Johnbod (talk) 00:44, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

text: I agree with Johnbod, 4meter4 and Smerus for the reasons I already gave in the prev. discussion above.  DP, you have been fighting this war for over 7 years.  There ought to be an "enough is enough" rule that prohibits the same person from bringing up the same discussion that they have lost over and over again. -- Ssilvers (talk) 07:22, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: The answer

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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message: We say, "By 1933… the play had been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times on European stages," but Douglas Jarman, Kurt Weill: An Illustrated Biography (Indiana University Press, 1982, ISBN 025314650, p. 48-49 says, "According to Heinsheimer, the piece was performed more than ten times every day during its first year, achieving some 42,000 performances during one single year." Cited there to Hans Heinsheimer, Menagerie in F Sharp (T V Boardman & Co, New York, 1949). A bit hard to say where in Heinsheimer to look, because Jarman's endnotes are numbered within each chapter like footnotes, but there are no footnote numbers in the main text. - Jmabel | Talk 02:00, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: Jmabel: I can't find anything like that in Hans Heinsheimer's Menagerie in F Sharp. Maybe you will have more luck. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 07:51, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text:   I don't have a copy. Maybe p. 139, if I can guess correctly which unattached citation it would be? - Jmabel | Talk 15:30, 20 January 2021 (UTC)
replies: text: (Changing pings after posting doesn't work; see Template:Reply to/doc.) I provided a link to a free online copy of Heinsheimer's book above. Pages 139ff, in chapter "The Sweet Cup of Success", deal with Johnny spielt auf. -- Michael Bednarek (talk) 02:05, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of performances may be even higher than stated 

message: though the play is a socialist critique of capitalist society Arendt characterises it's reception differently in her work "The Origins of Totalitarianism" She writes, "The play presented gangsters as respectable businessmen and respectable businessmen as gangsters. The irony was somewhat lost when respectable businessmen in the audience considered this a deep insight into the ways of the world and when the mob welcomed it as an artistic sanction of gangsterism. The theme song in the play, “Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral,” was greeted with frantic applause by exactly everybody, though for different reasons. The mob applauded because it took the statement literally; the bourgeoisie applauded because it had been fooled by its own hypocrisy for so long that it had grown tired of the tension and found deep wisdom in the expression of the banality by which it lived; the elite applauded because the unveiling of hypocrisy was such superior and wonderful fun. The effect of the work was exactly the opposite of what Brecht had sought by it. The bourgeoisie could no longer be shocked; it welcomed the exposure of its hidden philosophy, whose popularity proved they had been right all along, so that the only political result of Brecht’s “revolution” was to encourage everyone to discard the uncomfortable mask of hypocrisy and to accept openly the standards of the mob." (page 335) Hauntedturtle5 (talk) 02:01, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Or perhaps they liked the music? Johnbod (talk) 03:40, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: hahaha Hauntedturtle5 (talk) 05:12, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  ideology of the play