The Threepenny Opera

Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill (Autoren)

Buch | Softcover

152 Seiten

2022
Methuen Drama (Verlag)
978-1-350-20528-4 (ISBN)

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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.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is acknowledged as one of the great dramatists whose plays, work with the Berliner Ensemble and writing have had a considerable influence on the theatre. John Willett (1917-2002) was the greatest English-language authority on Brecht. The foremost translator and editor of Brecht's drama, poetry, letters, diaries, theatrical essays and fiction, Willett produced a dozen volumes for Methuen Drama on the greatest modern German writer. Ralph Manheim (1907-1992) was an American translator of German and French literature. In collaboration with John Willett, Manheim translated the works of Bertolt Brecht. The Pen/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation, inaugurated in his name, is a major lifetime achievement award in the field of translation. He himself won its predecessor, the PEN translation prize, in 1964. Anja Hartl is Assistant Professor at the Department of Literature, Art and Media Studies at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She has published essays on contemporary British theatre, Brecht and Shakespearean adaptation. Her research focuses on political theatre, adaptation studies, Shakespeare and Victorian fiction. She is the author of Brecht and Post-1990s British Drama in the Methuen Drama Engage series.

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

Erscheinungsdatum	11.02.2022
Reihe/Serie	Student Editions
Co-Autor	Elisabeth Hauptmann
Übersetzer	John Willett
Verlagsort	London
Sprache	englisch
Maße	129 x 198 mm
Gewicht	136 g
Themenwelt	Literatur ► Lyrik / Dramatik ► Dramatik / Theater
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
ISBN-10	1-350-20528-1 / 1350205281
ISBN-13	978-1-350-20528-4 / 9781350205284
Zustand	Neuware