Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's The threepenny opera (VHS tape) [WorldCat.org] Find more libraries Librarian? Claim your library to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's The threepenny opera Author: [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified] ; Public Media, Home Vision (distributor), 1995, ©1931. Edition/Format: WorldCat Summary: "Reconstructed in the sixties- years after the original negative was destroyed by the Nazis- G.W. Pabst's Threepenny opera remains a deliciously dark film adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's brillant musical. A master of atmosphere, Pabst combines realism and expressionism for a biting satire of 'respectable' society. Foggy sets by Andre Andreiev and Fritz Arno Wagner's stunning cinematography pull us down into the seedy underworld of 1890's London.

There a dashing thief called 'Mack the Knife' gets away with robbery on a daily basis until he marries the daughter of Soho's 'Beggar King.' When the outraged King sends a force of crooked cops after Mack, the bandit must run for his life."--Box. Read more... Rating: You are connected to the University of Washington Libraries network Hide local services for this item OCLC FirstSearch Add library to Favorites Please choose whether or not you want other users to be able to see on your profile that this library is a favorite of yours. Allow this favorite library to be seen by others Keep this favorite library private Find a copy in the library We were unable to get information about libraries that hold this item. Details Visual material All Authors / Contributors: German; In German with English subtitles. Notes: Title on cassette label: G.W. Pabst's The three penny opera. Based on the Beggar's opera by John Gay. Participants: Rudolph Forster, Carola Neher, Lotte Lenya and Fritz Rasp. Originally released in 1931. 1 videocassette (VHS) (113 min.) : sound, black and white ; 1/2 in.

Other Titles: Threepenny opera; G.W. Pabst's The three penny opera; Three penny opera; Beggar's opera Responsibility: a film by G.W. Pabst. Directed by G.W. Pabst ; screenplay by Leo Lania, Ladislav Vajda and Bela Balasz ; music by, Kurt Weil ; adapted by, Bertolt Brecht. Abstract: "Reconstructed in the sixties- years after the original negative was destroyed by the Nazis- G.W. Pabst's Threepenny opera remains a deliciously dark film adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's brillant musical. A master of atmosphere, Pabst combines realism and expressionism for a biting satire of 'respectable' society. Foggy sets by Andre Andreiev and Fritz Arno Wagner's stunning cinematography pull us down into the seedy underworld of 1890's London.

There a dashing thief called 'Mack the Knife' gets away with robbery on a daily basis until he marries the daughter of Soho's 'Beggar King.' When the outraged King sends a force of crooked cops after Mack, the bandit must run for his life."--Box. Reviews Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Add a review and share your thoughts with other readers. Be the first. Tags Add tags for "Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's The threepenny opera". Be the first. Similar Items schema:contributor < > ; # Rudolf Forster schema:description ""Reconstructed in the sixties- years after the original negative was destroyed by the Nazis- G.W. Pabst's Threepenny opera remains a deliciously dark film adaptation of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weil's brillant musical. A master of atmosphere, Pabst combines realism and expressionism for a biting satire of 'respectable' society. Foggy sets by Andre Andreiev and Fritz Arno Wagner's stunning cinematography pull us down into the seedy underworld of 1890's London.

There a dashing thief called 'Mack the Knife' gets away with robbery on a daily basis until he marries the daughter of Soho's 'Beggar King.' When the outraged King sends a force of crooked cops after Mack, the bandit must run for his life."--Box."@ en ; Berthold Brecht Berthold Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, Augsburg, S. Germany 1898 (Born: Feb. 10, 1898, Augsburg, Germany. Died: Aug. 14, 1956, East Berlin), "He made suggestions. We carried them out." What Brecht wanted inscribed on his tombstone. [2] INTRODUCTION TO BRECHT Yacht Club Written by Ty Narada Brecht, the German poet, playwright, and theatrical reformer, famous for redefining "Epic Theatre" that abandoned illusionary theatrical conventions: Reforged drama as a platform for social, ideological and left-wing propaganda. He believed that theater should not simply entertain, but should also convey a message. Brecht’s works exemplify frustration and discontent propelled by the traditional bourgeois values of his era.

Through his leftist solutions, he encouraged audiences to ‘think’ rather than to identify. This technique later became known as the "Alienation Effect," through which he became the canonical ‘voice of his generation’. [7][6] The Rising Gleam Brecht began to write poetry as a boy, and published his first poems in 1914. After finishing elementary school he was sent to the Königliches Realgymnasium, where he gained fame as an "Enfant Terrible." "Games had to be organized according to his wishes…he did not mind showing that he was the boss’s son in order to get his own way." [2] From his earliest moments, Brecht assumed the passion of a reformer, not withstanding the liabilities of his age. PUBERSCENT EXPRESSION Brecht’s interest in political issues inspired him to found a literary magazine entitled "The Harvest" (Die Ernte) when he was 15. [2] Through this magazine, Brecht effectively purveyed his political views and enthusiasm for the ‘holy’ German imperial cause to a more mature audience.

[2] THE MEDIC & THE SOLDIER When Brecht turned 19, his family’s stable middle-class income allowed him to enroll as a medical student at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1917. [8] During his time as a student, Brecht worked in an army hospital. It was his work in the army hospital that changed Brecht. He saw soldiers bloodied, maimed, and dead; undermined by monarchial claims of impending victory. Germany’s defeat at the end of World War I further aggravated Brecht’s disillusionment with the Government and this created feelings of betrayal. [6] Brecht separated from military service to resume his medical studies, but abandoned them in 1921. During the Bavarian Revolution of 1918, Brecht wrote his first play, BAAL, which was produced in 1923. He joined the Independent Social Democratic party in 1919 that was a Communist organization. Brecht was sensitive to a commonly-held sentiment among his generation, and those feelings of political betrayal inspired Brecht to pursue a more creative means of expression. It was ‘the artists’ during this period who were the radicals.

Artists sought to motivate political and social change through art. At first, Brecht wrote plays and poetry that conformed to traditional bourgeois standards. His script for BAAL, produced in 1923, was his inaugural statement as a Playwright. The encouraging response to BAAL resulted in the additional works: "Drum in the Night" (1922), a collection of poems and songs called Die Hauspostille and his first professional production of "Edward II" in 1924. These collective works established Brecht as a playwright, but his heart aspired for greater reach and a larger audience. His solution was to relocate to Berlin. BERLIN, 1924-33 Upon arrival to Berlin, Brecht worked for directors Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator while devoting most of his time to own production associates. In collaboration with famous composer Kurt Weill (q.v.) Brecht wrote the satirical, successful ballad opera Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera) and the opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930; Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahoganny).

He wrote "Lehr-stucke" ("exemplary plays") to the musical scores of Weill, Hindemith and Hanns Eisler, but they were badly didactic works for performance outside of orthodox theatre. During these years, Brecht began sketching his performance philosophies and adopted Marxism as his focal political premise. EPIC THEATRE CONCEIVED Brecht’s first theory was that of "Epic Theatre;" an austere form of irregular verse fused with Marxist policy. He used various visual effects and emotionless line reading techniques to forward his message. This technique clarified a play’s intention by removing an actor’s emotional attachment to a character – this would enable a play’s message to register with an audience unfettered by aesthetic distraction. [6] Since political betrayal and social depravity were commonly held vexations, the ideology of Marxism was employed to illuminate a key social misdynamic: The opposition between the expropriator and the expropriated; between the capitalist and the worker whose property-rights, in his own labor, the capitalist exploits. [3] DADAISM TO COMMUNISM "Epic Theatre" has its etymological development tiered in the ideological evolution of Brecht.

While in Berlin, Brecht became friends with many members of the Dadaist movement; a movement that sought to destroy the "false standards of bourgeois art." Dadaism used the devices of derision and iconoclastic satire to condemn bourgeois artistic views. Brecht would not have been Brecht had he ignored this movement. Being attracted to higher ideals and toward the advancement of the Human Condition, Brecht's friendship with Karl Korsch transcended his short-lived infatuation with Dadaism. Retaining the most intriguing concepts in search of an end, Korsch, an eminent Marxist theoretician, infused Brecht’s existing views with utopian elements of Marxism. This ‘vision’ became the moral premise that would underscore Brecht’s continued work; Brecht became Communist by default. [6] In his own words, "Communism represented the scientific way of looking at the Universe." [3] Karl Korsch had been a Communist member of the Reichstag who was expelled from the German Communist Party in 1926. [7] Brecht began his Marxist indoctrination by reading Karl Marx's Das Kapital and become Communist in 1929.

BEAUTIFICATION While at the Schiffbauerdam Theater, Brecht trained many actors who were to become famous on stage and screen. Among them was Oscar Homolka, Peter Lorre, and the singer Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weil's wife. Brecht worked on a political film with Hanns Eisler, Kuhle Wampe; the name referred to an area of Berlin where the unemployed lived in shacks. The film was released in 1932 and was banned shortly afterward. [8] [Appendix 1] During the Weimar Republic’s cultural years, Brecht’s avant guard approach to theatre was welcomed and embraced. His most famous reference works of Epic Theatre are "The Threepenny Opera", "Rise and Fall of the Town of Mahoganny", and a series of works entitled "Lehr Stucke" or "exemplary plays". [6] During this time, a new Nationalist movement was gaining popularity through violence, slick uniforms, zealous rallies and a magnetic leader whose oratory prowess and passionate appeals could seduce the support of industrialists and laypersons alike.

This new movement was opposed to Brecht’s "leftist gutter art" and Brecht’s reaction was not one of silence. THE DAY THE REICHSTAG BURNED On January 30th, 1933, Adolph Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany by a narrow margin. This single event unleashed sweeping social and political changes throughout Germany that were already in-place, awaiting legal sanction. This sanction came in the name of Der Fuhrer. Brecht’s options were reduced to self-imposed exile from Germany and he deported himself on February 28th, 1933 -- the day the Reichstag burned. [2] Brecht relocated to Scandinavia where he remained, mainly in Denmark until 1941. [2] In Germany, his books were burned, his plays were banned and his citizenship was revoked. Although he was cut off from the German theatre, most of his great plays were written between 1937 and 1941, to include his major theoretical essays, dialogues and many of the poems found in the Svendborger Gedichte collection (1939). His plays during this era became famous productions, produced by himself and others.

Most notable are Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (1941; Mother Courage and Her Children), a chronicle play of the Thirty Years' War that explains how greedy small entrepreneurs make devastating wars possible; Leben des Galilei (1943; The Life of Galileo); The Good Woman of Setzuan (1943) and DER KAUKASICHE KREIDEKREIS (1944-45), which demonstrates that ownership inherently belongs to those who can make the best humane use of [any given resource]. [8] THE GREAT PLAYS Galieleo Galileo deserves special attention in that such a profound statement was made when an intelligent scientist and inventor challenges the ruling global power, known for its ruthless theology and gladiatorial tolerance of the disenchanted. In this scenario, Galieleo as an old man, outwits the Inquisition: By recanting his heliocentric thesis, which proved that the Earth revolved around the Sun, he avoided torture and certain death. While under house-arrest, Galileo continued his scientific research under the noses of his jailers. [3] In Brecht’s presentation, the Church, rather than Galieleo proves to be the fool condemned.

Der gute Mensch von Sezuan In 1943, Brecht wrote and produced The Good Woman of Setzuan, a parable play set in prewar China that examines how one may be virtuous while surviving in a capitalist world; Der Aufhaltsame Aufstieg des Arturo Ui (1957; The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui), a parable play of Hitler's rise to power set in prewar Chicago; Herr Puntila und sein Knecht Matti (1948; Herr Puntila and His Man Matti), a Volksstuck (popular play) about a Finnish farmer who oscillates between churlish sobriety and drunken good humor; and The Caucasian Chalk Circle (first produced in English, 1948; Der kaukasische Kreidekreis, 1949), the story of a struggle for possession of a child between its highborn mother, who deserts it, and the servant girl who looks after it. [7] From Denmark, Brecht relocated to Finland, where he lived in Iitti in Villa Marlebäck as a guest of Finnish author Hella Wuolijoki.

There Brecht wrote the play HERR PUNTILA UND SEIN KNECHT MATTI (1940) where he earned the jealousy of Wuolijoki due to rumors of Brecht’s womanizing affairs. From Finland, Brecht moved his family to Russia and from Russia, to Santa Monica in the United States BRECHT IN THE USA Brecht came to the U.S. in 1941. He worked in Hollywood making films but only achieved limited success as a playwright. His play Hangmen Also Die (1942) received limited acceptance. He wrote other works but they did not achieve anything near the acclaim of his earlier works. In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee confronted Brecht. They accused him of being a Marxist, which he denied, and asked him for names of those who he knew to be Communists. Brecht provided many names, including Ronald Reagan. With a summons to appear before Congress, commensurate with the opening night of GALILEO in New York, Brecht intelligently fled to Switzerland, depriving himself of opening night but expediting his flight to freedom. [8] Brecht spent the remainder of his life in East Germany.

[6] LIFE AFTER SALEM After 15 years of exile, Brecht returned to Germany in 1948 and spent a year in Zürich adapting Friedrich Holderin’s translation of Sophocle’s Antigone for the Swiss State. He produced the new version in 1948. Brecht wrote his most important theoretical work, the Kleines Organon fur das Theater in 1949 ("A Little Organum for the Theatre") that contains the essence of his dramatic theories. That essence states that a truly Marxist drama must avoid the Aristotelian premise that the audience should be made to believe that what they are witnessing is happening here and now. Brecht believed that if an audience could authentically experience the emotions of the past, that the heroic tales of Oedipus, Lear, or Hamlet, under Marxist ideology, would be invalidated. Marxism teaches that Human nature is not constant, but a result of changing historical conditions. Brecht argued that the theatre should not seek to make its audience believe in the presence of the characters on the stage; that the audience should not identify with them, but should follow the method of the epic poet's art.

That art is to make the audience understand that what they view on the stage is a historic event; that the audience should view with critical detachment, the object from which "Epic," narrative and nondramatic theatre is derived. This effect he referred to as Verfremdungseffekt or The Alienation Effect: The effect is achieved through devices that remind the spectator that the play is ‘a demonstration’ of human behavior in scientific spirit, rather than with an illusion of reality. The theatre is only a theatre, and not the world itself. [7] RETURN TO EAST GERMANY In 1949 Brecht went to Berlin to help stage Mutter Courage und Ihre Kinder (with his wife, Helene Weigel, in the title part) at Reinhardt's old Deutsches Theater in the Soviet sector. This led to the formation of Brecht’s own Marxist theatre company, the Berliner Ensemble, and marked his permanent return to Berlin. Helene Weigel, his 2nd wife (1928), was his chief actress and continued as director of the company after Brecht’s death.

Brecht experienced problems with the new DDR authorities in spite of his effort to write prose that pleased the censors: He was often suspect in eastern Europe because of his unorthodox aesthetic theories. He was also boycotted in the West for his Communist opinions. Covertly, Brecht’s verse cryptically expressed suspicions about the inhumanity of the East German regime. Brecht was triumphant at the Paris Theatre des Nations in 1955, and in the same year in Moscow, he received a Stalin Peace Prize. To assure his personal freedom of travel, Brecht became an Austrian citizen in 1950. [7][8] The next year, Brecht contracted a lung inflammation disease and died of Coronary Thrombosis on August 14, 1956, in East Berlin. THE BRECHT LEXICON ACTOR DIANETICS "The contradiction between acting (demonstration) and experience (empathy) often leads the uninstructed to suppose that only one or the other can be manifest in the world of the actor (as if the Short Organum concentrated entirely on acting and the old tradition entirely on experience).

In reality it is a matter of two mutually hostile processes that fuse in the actor’s work; his performance is not just composed of a bit of the one and a bit of the other. His particular effectiveness comes from the tussle and tension of the two opposites, and also from their depth." [Brecht] [1] The actor’s feelings should not be fundamentally the same as those of his character. [3] ALIENATION EFFECT The V-Effekt (‘V’ for Verfremdung) a.k.a. ‘alienation technique’ means making the events on the stage seem strange and/or unfamiliar. [3] ANTI-CONVENTIONALIST "Only where the work appears in its familiar form does the world seem safe; unthreatened by the work of a ‘destroyer’." [Günther Rühle] [1] BAVARIAN THEATRICAL ETYMOLOGY "In Germany, the connection between theatre and politics has always been more prominent than in England." [3] BRECHTIAN THEATRE "The Brechtian theatre’s most fundamental principle is its commitment to social change.

The dramaturgical principle [see Terminology] most basic to fulfilling this commitment is that theatre must attempt to present society and human nature as changeable." [1] CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT "We don’t want ‘characters’ in the literal sense of the word on our stage – that is, people with imprinted, unchangeable ‘particularities’ that at best unfold themselves monadically. What interests us about people is their way of behaving, the topical reactions of various historical periods." [Brecht] [1] CONVERTING REALITY INTO THEATRE "Restoring the theatre’s reality as a theatre is now a precondition for any possibility of arriving at realistic images of human social life…Reality, however complete, has to be altered by being turned into art so that it can be seen to be alterable and be treated as such." [Brecht] [1] THE DIALECTICAL APPROACH "The dialectical approach treats social situations as processes, and traces out all their inconsistencies [contradictions]. It regards nothing as existing except in so far as it changes, in other words, is in disharmony with itself.

This also goes for those human feelings, opinions, and attitudes through which the form of men’s lives together finds its expression." [BT, 193] [1] EPIC THEATRE The Threepenny Opera: Bertolt Brecht, E. Hauptmann, Kurt Weill, Ralph Manheim, John Willett: Amazon.com: Books The Threepenny Opera Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Paperback $9.91 Prime Next Special Offers and Product Promotions Get a $75.00 statement credit after first Amazon.com purchase made with new Discover itÂ® card within 3 months. Terms and conditions apply. See offer for details. Apply now. Editorial Reviews Very good+ hardcover with DJ. Pages are clean and unmarked. Covers like new. Binding is tight, hinges strong. Dust jacket shows light edge wear. Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App .

Ignite your imagination with these editor's picks from Kindle books. See more Product Details Publisher: Vintage Books; Book Club Edition edition (1977) Language: English Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces By A Customer on March 18, 1998 Format: Paperback Of all the translations on the market, this one is the best -- most are watered-down, tepid versions. Manheim & Willet's was used in the late 1970's revival of the piece by the New York Shakespeare Festival, which starred the late Raul Julia and Ellen Greene (of "Little Shop of Horrors" fame, in the role originally intended for Lotte Lenya). The OREL Foundation | Kurt Weill | Biography Kurt Weill Article by Gregg Wager Despite the relative brevity of his life, composer Kurt Weill forged a far-reaching career that challenged the purity of preexisting styles. As a famous German Jew, he fled Nazi Germany, fending for himself in foreign countries such as America, where versatility of styles, unlike anything in Germany, interested him the most.

That these varied styles music and theater, American and Europeanin which he worked were (and sometimes still are) hostile to one another, places him less in the role of a unifier, and more in the role of a crossover artist. Many who unconditionally praise Weill's output typically pick only one of his musical personalities and contrive ways of dismissing whatever other body of his work might offend them (whether his German music, Broadway music, lowbrow songs or highbrow works). Critics and scholars are presented a perplexing task when called upon to classify or evaluate Weill's importance to music or theater of the 20thcentury, since their critical versatility rarely matches Weill's creative versatility. As he was sometimes outspoken, attacking with flare what he declared to be outmoded prejudices, Weill provided many quotable statements that lend support to many of his adherents, as well as his detractors.

At other times he seemed to maneuver with stealth, using these very same prejudices to cleverly keep his career vital, nonchalantly but deftly pressing the political buttons of the international music world of the 1920s, 30s and 40s. He was deceptively shrewd with business, socially charming, despite his shyness, and, above all, planned everything he did with equanimity and without impetuosity. In all these ways, he was the direct opposite of his most famous collaborator, Bertolt Brecht. Early Life Born in Dessau March 2, 1900, Kurt Julian Weill was the son of a Jewish cantor. Despite his religious upbringing, he did not ostensibly practice Judaism throughout his life, although these roots came into substantial play at opportune and inopportune moments of his career. In 1918, he traveled to Berlin and studied philosophy and music, including a brief period with the opera composer Engelbert Humperdinck. A few years later, he took up lessons with Ferrucio Busoni, who would be his primary composition teacher.

During these student years, Weill worked industriously on many purely instrumental works and songs, mostly in Post-Romantic style, as well as his first attempts at opera. As the distinctively chaotic culture of Berlin between the wars began to thrive, Weill found his way into the Novembergruppe, an organization of progressive artists from different disciplines that included musicians such as Hanns Eisler and Stefan Wolpe. In this progressive environment, Weill found collaborators who would help mold his innovative vision of modern music theater, including Yvan Goll and Georg Kaiser (whose assistant, Lotte Lenya, became Weill's wife and a powerful force in his career). Weill Finds Brecht / Brecht Finds Weill While Weill was working as a writer/critic for Der Deutsche Rundfunk, he glowingly reviewed a 1927 radio performance of Bertolt Brecht's Mann ist Mann. Brecht was so impressed by the review, and by the fact that a composer could have such insights into theater, that he invited Weill to dinner.

Weill must have been further enticed when Brecht presented to him a lengthy published book of poetry with the title Bertolt Brechts Hauspostille (Bertolt Brecht's Household Breviarya reference to a work by Martin Luther). In a foldout appendix glued to the back lid of the book, notated melodies and lyrics for five songs, known as the Mahagonny Lieder, demonstrated Brecht's interest in putting words to music and evidenced unmistakable influence by cabaret poet and singer Frank Wedekind. In those days, Brecht carried a guitar with him wherever he went, belting out songs, which were often in pidgin English (one of Brecht's many prophecies was that a form of pidgin English would be the first world language). Some acquaintances even insist he was quite accomplished on the guitar.

A young composer working for Brecht named Franz Servatius Bruinier (1905-1928) is credited with first writing out the melodies of the Mahagonny Lieder, and an extant recital program for a vocalist suggests he also arranged them for voice and piano, along with several other songs attributed to Weill/Brecht, including Seeräuber-Jenny (Pirate Jenny) and Surabaya-Jonny. Weill claimed he never considered these (or any other melodies presented to him by Brecht) when writing out his own melodies and arrangements, but these ur-melodies by Brecht or Brecht/Bruinier are definitely the seeds from which many of Weill's early theatrical songs evolved. The origin of the word Mahagonny is unclear: one possible source is a 1922 song by Leopold Krauss-Elka and O. A.

Alberts, Komm nach Mahagonne!, which was made into a hit by the Norwegian crooner Henry Erichsen; or it could have also been inspired by the Biblical city of Magog. Mahagonny, as a run-amok town in Alaska, partly symbolizes Berlin during its hyperinflation of the 1920s, but draws influence from Jack London's stories and Charlie Chaplin's The Goldrush (1925). Weill added a sixth song to the Mahagonny Lieder, provided a stridently dissonant accompaniment while maintaining the cabaret feel, and created the first of the Brecht/Weill collaborations with the title Mahagonny Songspiel. The word Songspiel parodied the German tradition of Singspiel, replacing the word sing with the American word song. Mahagonny Songspiel was staged for the 1927 Donaueschingen Festival (held in Baden-Baden that year), which was organized by Paul Hindemith and emphasized new music theater.

The relationship between Weill and Brecht was famously not a warm friendship, although Brecht frequently avoided overt friendly contact with collaborators (with some exceptions). Nonetheless, Brecht's influence on Weill must have been enormous, from his ideas on epic theatre (i.e., an anti-escapist approach to theater attributed to Brecht's friend Erwin Piscator that allowed the audience to see stagehands and the mechanics of theater while they functioned) to the prophecies of America's culture laden with unostentatious gangsters overtaking European culture. Later dubbed The New Objectivity (die neue Sachlichkeit), the overall theatrical approach emphasizes gesture by the actors/singers and served as a reaction against German Expressionism via realistic, non-distorted images (such as in newspapers). There is also a concerted attempt to put relevant social and political commentary into the productions, no matter how old or exotic the source material is.

Die Dreigroschenoper / The Threepenny Opera A successful revival in London of John Gay's 1728 The Beggar's Opera caught Brecht's eye, and he instructed his assistant, Elisabeth Hauptmann, to prepare a German translation of it. A Berlin actor named Ernst Josef Aufricht had recently acquired a theater (Theater am Schiffbauerdamm) and offered its première production to Brecht. Brecht agreed and proposed the German version of The Beggar's Opera, also insisting on discarding the original 18th-century songs and replacing them with new, original songs. From this simple idea, Weill set new lyrics by Brecht to new songs (one original song from The Beggar's Opera was retained), and they called the concoction Die Dreigroschenoper (now popularly translated as The Threepenny Opera, even though a Groschen is actually a dime). The overwhelming success of this 1928 production (with Lenya playing one of the minor roles) made celebrities out of Brecht and Weill.

Unlike Mahagonny Songspiel, Weill's music in Die Dreigroschenoper did more than demonstrate influence by the hit songs (or Schlager) from America's then infamous Tin Pan Alley and jazz: it genuinely created a craze (referred to as Dreigroschenfieber or Threepenny fever). Although a simplified arrangement of The Alabama Song from Mahagonny Songspiel was published in sheet music form and promoted as if it could be a hit song (it would 40 years later), many songs from Die Dreigroschenoper became hits without much promotion shortly after they were performed, especially the opening number Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, which would become one of the biggest hit songs of the 20th-century after both Weill and Brecht had died. Dreigroschenfieber spread throughout Europe and spawned a popularized version of the work through early sound movies, including G. W. Pabst's filmed version of Die Dreigroschenoper (1931).

Elsewhere, songwriters such as Friedrich Holländer and Rudolf Nelson wrote popular songs for singers such as Marlene Dietrich, creating a culture that the Nazis referred to as Jewish Bolshevism. At least one of these famous singers, Kurt Gerron, who played Tiger Brown in the original cast of Die Dreigroschenoper, was murdered along with his family in Auschwitz in 1944. [He had been forced to direct the infamous Theresienstadt propaganda movie for the Nazis.] Brecht/Weill and Beyond The next Brecht/Weill collaboration, Happy End, utilizes less music than Die Dreigroschenoper, but is stylistically similar. An attempt to expand the Mahagonny Lieder into a full-length opera, Der Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny), met with many obstacles, including ongoing demonstrations by the Nazis. A radio cantata called Der Lindberghflug and a school opera in two versions based on Japanese Noh drama (Der Jasager/Der Neinsager) were collaborations on a smaller scale.

Despite Weill's plunge into his own sophisticated version of popular music, he apparently still held on to ambitions of being a more conventional opera composer. While still in Berlin, he composed such an opera, Die Bürgschaft, working with Brecht's childhood friend and scenic designer Caspar Neher (with whose wife, Erika, Weill was having an open affair). Georg Kaiser's and Weill's Die Silbersee is more a musical, but Weill also considered it an opera. One month after its simultaneous opening in three different German cities in 1933, Weill decided to leave Germany for Paris with little more than a suitcase. In Paris, Weill collaborated again with Brecht in a ballet chanté (i.e., a ballet with singing) called Die sieben Todsünden (The Seven Deadly Sins), starring dancer Tilly Losch and Weill's then estranged wife Lenya. The production served as part of the first and only season of George Balanchine's short-lived troupe known as Les Ballets.

The widely held myth that Weill's relationship with Brecht had by this time deteriorated beyond repair is not consistent with the evidence that they stayed in contact for the rest of Weill's life (Brecht outlived him by only six years). In fact, they would make another attempt to collaborate one evening in 1943 at Weill's house with Schweyk in the Second World War and The Good Woman of Setzuan. Weill's American Career Weill arrived in New York City in 1935, expecting to only work on one gigantic pageant of Judaism with the title The Eternal Road. The enormous Meyer Weisgal production brought together a dream team of director Max Reinhardt, librettist Franz Werfel and Weill. Because of its huge scope, The Eternal Road met with many financial and production setbacks, and Weill had a chance to settle into New York and rub elbows with some of the most influential American theatrical talents of that time.

By the time The Eternal Road began its limited run in 1937, Weill had already premièred on Broadway his first American collaboration, Johnny Johnson, with playwright Paul Green (produced by the Group Theatre, led by Cheryl Crawford, Lee Strasbourg, and Harold Clurman). His friendship with writer Maxwell Anderson (who would also become Weill's neighbor) led to Knickerbocker Holiday (1938), which included the hit September Song. A collaboration with Moss Hart and Ira Gershwin earned him a genuine Broadway hit with Lady in the Dark (1941), followed by another hit with Ogden Nash and S. J. Perelman, One Touch of Venus (1943), at a time when the most renowned Broadway musicals, such as Oklahoma! and South Pacific, were becoming standard fare. Some of the more successful late Weill productions included Street Scene (1947), Love Life (1948) and Lost in the Stars (1949).

Weill's Posthumous Career When Weill died of a heart ailment one month after his 50th birthday (3 April 1950), his legacy and estate went into the hands of Lenya, who continued to nurture his career up until her death in 1981. Unexpected prosperity came in 1954 with an English-language version in New York City of Brecht/Weill's The Threepenny Opera, with help (including a stylish translation) from composer Marc Blitzstein. This production distinguishes itself as one of a handful of productions that became the cornerstone of the phenomenon known as Off-Broadway. A few years later, Louis Armstrong made the song Mack the Knife into a hit single, followed by a version by Bobby Darrin (1959) that became one of the most famous Grammy-winning hits of all time.

Many American television and movie stars, including Jerry Ohrbach, Bea Arthur, Jerry Stiller, and Ed Asner, appeared in this Off-Broadway production, which ran at the Theatre de Lys (today, the Lucille Lortel Theatre in Greenwich Village) for almost a decadeone of the longest running shows in New York City history. Some other cultural barrier crisscrossing addenda to Weill's career include the fact that Lenya starred as the villain Rosa Klebb in the James Bond film From Russia With Love (1963) and was no doubt the inspiration for the female villain Frau Farbissina in comedian Mike Myers's successful Austin Powers trilogy of movies (1997, 1999 and 2002). In 1967, The Doors recorded a simplified version of Brecht/Weill's Alabama Song which became a big hit, inspiring other rock stars to cover the song including David Bowie and Marilyn Manson. In many ways, Weill had just as much, if not more, influence on the second half of the 20th-century than the first. This influence is still widely taken for granted.

Crossover and Its Confusion Xenophobia between European and American cultures inevitably produce oversimplified viewpoints of Weill's music, whether assessing it positively or negatively: the Germans (especially Berliners) tend to look upon his American career as less important; and many Americans (especially New Yorkers, such as author Foster Hirsch) insist his German career is less important than what he did on Broadway. In a similar way, the traditional rift between high and low culture (which in Germany is commonly specified as E-Kultur and U-Kultur) is illustrated, for instance, by opera purists looking down at Weill's work as selling out to popular culture, and pop culture purists often treating the notion of high culture altogether as some sort of malicious snobbery. Such oversimplifications suffer not only from myopia, but double-vision: a clichéd two-Weills approach to assessing his career is common. Included in this confusion is how to classify Weill's innovative theatrical works in light of the fact that universal definitions of opera and musical do not exist.

Weill himself called Street Scene an American opera almost as a nuance to distinguish or elevate it. Michael Feingold, drama critic for The Village Voice, calls Weill the most influential composer of the [20th] century, and this goes beyond a theater critic's admiration of Weill's indispensable contribution to the Off-Broadway scene in New York. Feingold uses Weill to articulate the view of many pop culture enthusiasts that, in the 20th century, American pop culture became the heir of European classical music of the 18th and 19th centuries within a universal musical language that resonates with and within important historical events. More doctrinaire critiques, such as Virgil Thompson's, have dismissed Weill's work as dabbling in popular music, although Thompson typically mitigates this with guardedly positive statements about Weill's music.

Weill's own composition teacher Ferruccio Busoni, despite their close friendship and mutual admiration, criticized Weill's work in music theater as a poor man's Giuseppe Verdi. Theodor Adorno dismissed Weill altogether as a mere tunesmith and arranger. Kim Kowalke, who has served as the President of the Kurt Weill Foundation since Lenya's death in 1981, strongly asserts that Weill's significance lies beyond his collaboration with Brecht. He further points out that all of Weill's works are some sort of hybrid, unrelated to one another. He points to Die Bürgschaft and Street Scenes as Weill's true legacy as an opera composer. In all these ways, assessing and reassessing Weill throughout the years produces many differing opinions. Perhaps the difficult task of fairly assessing Weill's career as a whole will never yield a definitive view. If the multifarious culture of the 20th-century requires such a versatile crossover artist, then perhaps Weill is a quintessential representative of this era. Undoubtedly, much of his versatility rested in his ability to adapt, something many of his fellow German émigrés could not do as well.

Kurt Weill (1900 - 1950) - Find A Grave Memorial New York County (Manhattan) New York, USA Composer. An influential figure in 20th Century musical theatre, active in Germany, France and the United States. Weill made no distinction between "light" and "serious" music and characteristically combined popular idioms with classical and modern techniques. His best known work, the Bertolt Brecht collaboration "The Threepenny Opera" (1928), was written in the style of Jazz Age German cabaret. In America he found success on Broadway and received the first Tony Award in the best original score category for the operatic "Street Scene" (1947). The son of a Jewish cantor, Kurt Julian Weill was born in Dessau, Germany. He studied music in Berlin with Engelbert Humperdinck (1918 to 1919) and with Ferruccio Busoni at the Prussian Academy (1921 to 1923), while gaining professional experience as a nightclub pianist and theatre conductor. In his early compositions, among them the Symphony No.

1 (1921), Divertimento (1922), the Violin Concerto (1924), and two string quartets (1919, 1923), he experimented with post-romanticism, atonality and neoclassicism; and he enjoyed a succ�s d'estime with the one-act expressionist opera "The Protagonist" (1926), based on a play by Georg Kaiser. But Weill's desire to communicate with a wider public - and perhaps the realization that he was a natural tunesmith - drew him closer to jazz and dance music. In this spirit he sought out Brecht, newly arrived in Berlin, and they began their brief, fruitful partnership with the "Mahagonny Songspiel" (1927), in which he introduced an edgy but populist song-based style. Critics accused Weill of "selling out" but he pursued this vein with incomparably greater results in "The Threepenny Opera".

A forerunner of the modern "book musical", it was an adaptation of John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" (1728), which satirized corruption and the lower levels of 18th Century English society. Brecht updated the story to Victorian London but gave it a contemporary anti-bourgeois spin with his sardonic lyrics, set to the bittersweet melodies of Weill's foxtrots, tangos and ballads. The hit number "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" was a last-minute addition, written at the insistence of the actor playing the gangster Macheath. "The Threepenny Opera" was an immense success in Germany and was made into a film (1931) by director G. W. Pabst; Weill adapted some of the material into the orchestral concert suite "Little Threepenny Music" (1929). Ironically, it now stands as a vivid symbol of the decadent Weimar Republic era the authors had meant to condemn.

He and Brecht subsequently worked together on the musical "Happy End" (1929), the cantatas "Berlin Requiem" (1928) and "Lindbergh's Flight" (1929), the didactic opera for students "The Yes Sayer" (1930), and an expansion of the "Mahagonny Songspiel" into the satirical opera "The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" (1930), though they never developed a close friendship. When Hitler came to power Weill was among the first German artists to be branded "degenerate" by the Nazis, and in March 1933 he fled to Paris. There he effectively bid farewell to his creative past through his final collaboration with Brecht, the "sung ballet" "The Seven Deadly Sins" (1933), and his last purely instrumental work, the Symphony No. 2 (1934). Settling in New York in 1935, Weill made a conscious effort to become Americanized; he quickly learned English and from then on spoke German only to his dog. He became a US citizen in 1943.

Toning down the spikiness and satire of his previous music, he focused on writing for the Broadway stage in a more warmly lyrical style that attempted to bridge the gap between traditional opera and American musical theatre. This culminated in his "Broadway opera" "Street Scene" and the "musical tragedy" "Lost in the Stars" (1949), though his biggest hits were the comedies "Lady in the Dark" (1941) and "One Touch of Venus" (1943). His other shows are "Johnny Johnson" (1936), "Knickerbocker Holiday" (1938), "The Firebrand of Florence" (1944), and "Love Life" (1948). Long afflicted with high blood pressure, he died of a heart attack at 50, leaving a planned musical adaptation of "Huckleberry Finn" unfinished. Weill's muse and finest interpreter was singer-actress Lottie Lenya . They married in 1926, divorced amicably in 1933, and remarried in 1937.

After his death she vigorously promoted his legacy, establishing the Kurt Weill Foundation in 1962. Lenya was the star and driving force behind Marc Blitzstein 's Tony-winning (and sanitized) English-language adaptation of "The Threepenny Opera", which ran in New York for a record 2,611 performances (1954 to 1961) and was the first great triumph of the Off Broadway scene. Blitzstein's version of "Mack the Knife" became one of the most popular songs of the later 1900s, scoring a Number One hit for Bobby Darin (1959) and covered by Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and many other artists. Other Weill standards are "Pirate Jenny" from "The Threepenny Opera", "Surabaya Johnny" and "Bilbao Song" from "Happy End", "Alabama Song (Whisky Bar)" from "Mahagonny", "September Song" from "Knickerbocker Holiday", "The Saga of Jenny" and "My Ship" from "Lady in the Dark", and "Speak Low" from "One Touch of Venus".

He was inducted into the ASCAP Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970. To date "The Threepenny Opera" has been translated into 18 languages and performed over 10,000 times on stages around the world. (bio by: Bobb Edwards) The Threepenny Opera: Amazon.co.uk: Bertolt Brecht: 9780844617343: Books The Threepenny Opera Currently unavailable. We don't know when or if this item will be back in stock. Customers also viewed these available items ( 35 ) Â£8.79 Customers Who Viewed This Item Also Viewed Page 1 of 1 Start over Page 1 of 1 This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading. Paperback Â£8.79 Amazon Prime Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.

Apple To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. or Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here , or download a FREE Kindle Reading App . Product details Publisher: Peter Smith Pub Inc (Jun. 1964) Language: English Product Dimensions: 1.9 x 11.4 x 17.8 cm Average Customer Review: Product Description Review "An excellent resource...Willett and Manheim have become the unchallenged mediators of Brecht for the English-speaking audience."--Marc Silberman, Editor, "Brecht Yearbook" "At last--the definitive translations of one of the 20th century's most influential playwrights...Far superior to the competition."--"Theatre Journal" An excellent resource...Willett and Manheim have become the unchallenged mediators of Brecht for the English-speaking audience. "Marc Silberman, Editor, Brecht Yearbook" At last--the definitive translations of one of the 20th century's most influential playwrights Far superior to the competition. "Theatre Journal"" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author Lys Symonette began her collaboration with Weill and Lenya in 1945 as Weill's musical assistant on Broadway. After Weill's death, she was Lenya's accompanist and musical adviser and now serves as Musical Executive of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music in New York. Kim H. Kowalke is Professor of Musicology at the University of Rochester and President of the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. He has edited two collections of essays about Weill and authored numerous essays on twentieth-century music and theater. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and critical writings have had a considerable influence on the theatre. His landmark plays include "The Threepenny Opera", "Fear and Misery of the Third Reich", "The Life of Galileo, " "Mother Courage and Her Children "and "The Caucasian Chalk Circle." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item? By A Customer on 18 Mar.

1998 Format: Paperback Of all the translations on the market, this one is the best -- most are watered-down, tepid versions. Manheim & Willet's was used in the late 1970's revival of the piece by the New York Shakespeare Festival, which starred the late Raul Julia and Ellen Greene (of "Little Shop of Horrors" fame, in the role originally intended for Lotte Lenya). 10 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By PINK Elly on 24 Feb. 2010 Format: Paperback This is probably Bertolt Brecht's best known work and all because of one song that appears at the beginning of the piece made uber famous by Bobby Darrin, many of the rat pack including Frank Sinatra and more recently Michael Buble. Quite a useful 'in' to the otherwise unfamiliar world of Brecht and his Epic style theatre. The song itself an open discussion about how affective it is in terms of technique. Plenty of characters to explore with potential for characture and gestus.

Video footage also available to support the study. A nice musical set in London's Soho which students quickly warm to. If you need to teach Brecht, this is a great place to start. Comment 5 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again By John P. Jones III TOP 500 REVIEWER on 19 Dec. 2016 Format: Paperback …on the jugglers and the clowns when they did their tricks for you.” Despite his deplorable behavior since he won the Nobel Prize, his lyrics remain an essential touchstone of our culture. How do the down and out, the “lumpen-proletariat,” in Marxist rhetoric, view life, and those “above” them, at least economically?

Another one of my favorite songs with this theme was sung by Judy Collins: “Pirate Jenny.” Jenny is the one who scrubs the floors, and as she says: “Maybe once ya tipped me and it made ya feel swell.” Jenny dreams of obtaining the power for revenge, so that she is the one who provides the answer to the question from her “troops”: “Kill them now, or later?” “Then they’ll pile up the bodies, and I’ll say: ‘That’ll learn ya’.” It took me almost three decades after first hearing these words to learn that the song was part of the Threepenny Opera, and I would obtain that knowledge watching a performance of it in Riyadh, of all places. Bertolt Brecht wrote this opera at the age of 30. It was first produced in 1928, during the purported glory days of the Weimar Republic.

Brecht was a nascent communist, perhaps only a version of which that was defined by a character in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath : “A Communist is any (S.O.B.) who wants 30 cents an hour when we’re paying 25 cents.” The opera is set in London, and is consider to be an update of “The Beggar’s Opera” which was first produced in 1728. In part, the enduring fame of Brecht’s work is the result of the harsh Nazi reaction to it. Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum is proprietor of the Beggar’s Friend Ltd. A cynic if there ever was one. Read more › Comment Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback... Thank you for your feedback. Sorry, we failed to record your vote.

Please try again 1000+ images about Mackie Messer on Pinterest | Mack the knife, The threepenny opera and John gay Pinterest • The world’s catalog of ideas Mackie Messer The 1928 Berlin production of "Die Dreigroschenoper" (The Threepenny Opera), by Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht, was based on the English play, "The Beggar's Opera," written in 1728, two centuries before. It features a Jack-the-Ripperesque character named Macheath, known to the public as "Mack the Knife." But, no witness can place him at the scene of his crimes, and so he goes about his knife work with impunity. The introductory song is titled "Moritat von Mackie Messer," or "Mack the Knife." 31 Pins6 Followers Peter Posa | Home to Grillers in the Mixed Home to Grillers in the Mixed Listen here Like Chuck Berry almost said, I got no kick against modern jazz, unless they try to play it too darn fast. This is the kind of easy on the ear jazz I can live with and enjoy.

Duke Jordan was a pianist of the jazz variety who died in 2003. He had a moderately significant career in the late 1950s and early 1960s but his career hit the skids the same time jazz gave way to more teen-focused forms of music. Our man ended up driving a taxi in New York and then, from 1978, moved to Denmark. While there he recorded loads of albums, including the one this is from, ‘Time On My Hands’ and they’re all now on Spotify, albeit with nobody really having played them. But it has now. You’ll all like this, a beautiful slab of piano and double-bass driven slow jazz. Like the sort that you’d get at the pseudo-posh steak house in the Cube in Birmingham. It’s an interpretation of a Ralph Rainger-Leo Robin composition and is very cool indeed. Excavation Rating: B- Listen here Meet Peter Posa, a New Zealand-born and based guitarist. Just look at him! What a cool fella, possibly the most 1960s person EVER.

Now, he was a bit of big deal in the 1960s Down Under and had a number one hit with his song ‘White Rabbit’, although he never made it beyond those shores despite rubbing shoulders with Sinatra and the Brat Pack in the U.S. This comes from his Greatest Hits, released in 1966. The track is a souped-up version of Mozart’s ‘Turkish March’ (you’ll all recognise) it. It’s a flamenco-style acoustic instrumental and gets the old foot tapping, for sure. If you can resist giving those old shoulders a wiggle to this, you’re possibly dead. I looked into the fella, he appeared to fall off the face of the planet in the late 1960s, pretty much after this compilation came out. Turns out he had all sorts of alcohol and depression problems, linked no doubt to the ephemeral nature of fame, and after a car accident in 1970 (under the influence of booze) which basically put him out of action for decades. He kicked the booze in the 1990s and still plays in and around Auckland. An interesting enough story and a decent bit of music, well worth rediscovering.

Excavation Rating: A Listen here Further suggesting that Spotify isn’t the chosen platform for classical music lovers, this is a track from Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht’s ‘Die Dreigroschenoper’ or ‘Threepenny Opera’ which dates back to the 1920s. It’s probably most famous for containing a number of standards that would evolve to become part of popular culture including ‘Mack the Knife’. I always fear I am exposing my ignorance on classical music, but this was recorded by Ute Temper, Rolf Boysen, Rene Kollo, John Mauceri and the Berlin Symphony Orchestra and released in 1988. The play itself is very well known, adapted from an 18th-century English ballad opera , John Gay ‘s The Beggar’s Opera , and offering a Socialist critique of the capitalist world. In the days when people who did do such things didn’t meet barrages of criticism from Twitter trolls. It’s a short interlude between more theatrical bits of music so we can’t take a lot of joy from it. Plus, as regular readers will know, I have to admit I can’t claim to be a connoisseur of classical music.

Or even an amateur for that matter. Excavation Rating: C- Listen here I suspect even the most culturally boneheaded type will have heard of Arthur Rubinstein, Polish classical pianist and widely regarded as one of the finest talents of the 20th century. That, I admit, is pretty much as far as my knowledge goes. And I’m going to expose myself as a bit of a fraud if I try to go any further. Slightly surprising this has never been played before, although I suppose Spotify isn’t necessary aimed at the classical crowd. The track is from what looks like a box-set of his work (11 discs by the looks of it) released in the same year that he died, in 1982. Musically, it’s a cracking uptempo jaunty bounce along that I can’t imagine even non-classical music fans wouldn’t find quite engaging. Let’s just say, our man Arthur can get a decent tune out of the old Joanna. And, looking into his life, one thing jumped out. Five years before he died in 1982 aged 95, he left his wife of 45 years for a concert promoter who, at the time was 33.

A lively character, then. Excavation Rating: A- Listen here Italian synthpop is one of those definitely underrated genres so it’s good to be able to dig this one up, dust it down and give it a good airing. Novecento were a band set up in the early 80s Pino and Lino Nicolosi. They started off doing Euro-disco and moved into this kind of stuff in the late 1980s and the album this is from (‘Shine’) came along in 1990. It’s proper inoffensive syth-driven pop, all drum machines and breathless female vocals (in a decent form of English in fairness). Very much in the same vein as Roxette or Ace of Base but not quite so horrific and sickly. Excavation Rating: C+

Question: Which work by Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil is based on a work by John Gay?
Answer: The THREEPENNY OPERA