The Threepenny Opera

Many books, three film-versions, countless Schiffbauerdamm-Theatre, Aufricht lept at stage-productions, and ever-growing the idea of an adaptation by Brecht of The mountains of scholarly dissertations and Beggar's Opera, and probably didn't need popular journalism, testify to the enduring his literary advisors to remind him that fascination of Die Dreigroschenoper and 1928 marked the 200th anniversary of its multilingual progeny - The Threepenny John Gay's play, or that Nigel Playfair's O pera, L 'Opera da Tre Soldi, L 'opera de revival of 1920 had broken all records - quat'sous, and so forth. Sheer commercial running non-stop for three years at the success does of course play its part in that (Schiffbauerdamm-like) Lyric Theatre, fascination, as it always will where theatre Hammersmith, and then repeatedly and above all the musical stage are brought back by popular demand. The concerned; for nowhere else - not in the German rights in the Playfair-Austin board-room or the bedroom, the football version were held by Schott, and as stadium or the operating theatre - is the Stephen Hinton's researches have revealed, evidence and even the anatomy of success Schott had written in 1925 to their star so clear, yet the science of it so inexact. As composer, Paul Hindemith, suggesting a the great Alfred Kerr remarked a propos modernized and indeed jazzy version of of Die Dreigroschenoper: "The theatre is the score. Hindemith does not appear to not a load of theoretical nonsense. It is have responded. dynamic and full of variety, of life. It is Knowing nothing of Weill - and why laughter in all kinds of weather. It is the should he, at that time? -but impressed bustle of humanity." by Brecht's recommendation, Aufricht It was in that very bustle that Die went to Leipzig to hear Weill's latest Dreigroschenoper began life. During the piece, the one-act opera The Tsar has his theatre season 1927-28 Brecht was a Photograph Taken, whose premiere was member of the writers' collective working on 18 February 1928. By the time with Erwin Piscator at his Theater am Aufricht's oft-repeated story reached his Nollendorfplatz in Berlin, and Weill was memoirs, some important details had largely occupied with the composition of been lost or transformed, but one key Rise and Fall of Mahagonny City (Aufstieg element remains constant: he found the und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny). For opera's "modernist" idioms quite Brecht, the year had begun with the Berlin unsuitable for a Beggar's Opera (not to premiere on 5 January of his comedy mention his own legitimate commercial Mann ist Mann (A Man's a Man). purposes), and promptly asked his A revelation to Weill when he read and musical director Theo Mackeben - reviewed it nine months earlier, the play himself a composer of light music and was not a popular success and was not cabaret songs- to prepare a substitute specifically intended to be. score based on Pepusch's original edition Financially speaking, however, these were of 1728. still hard times for Brecht (as for Weill). These alarms and excursions seem When first approached, early in 1928, by strikingly unnecessary. Even if Aufricht, the young producer Ernst Jose£ Aufricht for some obscure reason, was reluctant to a former bit-part player and cabarettist, talk with Weill and ask him to play now converted to higher things by the something appropriate from the previous magic of a generous cheque from his year's Mahagonny Songspiel, a short ride fa ther- Brecht failed to interest him in his on the S-Bahn on the 5th of April would works-in-progress (which in any case were have brought his team to the Lessing promised to Piscator). According to Theatre and the opening night of Aufricht's highly coloured account, Brecht Piscator's production of Konjunktur then "remembered" a translation of John (Trade Cycle), a documentary of oil Gay's The Beggar's Opera his friend politics for which Weill had composed a Elisabeth Hauptmann was preparing for score containing "The Mussel of him. He also remembered Weill. Margate", a hit-song as rumbustious as By now desperate to find a play with any that a modern Beggar's Opera might which to open his first season at the small call for (it will be featured, incidentally, in 13 the Weill-centenary concert at the QEH more wickedly, Pfitzner, Schreker, or on 2 March 2000). What's more, one of Korngold? By 1928, Schreker and the leading roles in Konjunktur was Korngold already seemed to belong to a played by Roma Bahn, eventually to vanished era; and as for Strauss and become Brecht's and Weill's first Polly in Pfitzner, their own individual worlds were Die Dreigroschenoper. no threat to Hindemith's or to Weill's. But within a year of the Dreigroschenoper Aufricht does not mention Konjunktur premiere, Hindemith would try his hand (and neither do the commentators who at parodying Weill, while cohorts of lesser rightly pick holes in his tale). Whatever composers were endeavouring to imitate the true and exact sequence of events, it is him. clear that any doubts about Weill's musical qualifications had been dispelled In the German-speaking world, and not long before the historic premiere at the only there, the one obvious victim of Die Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on 31 Dreigroschenoper was the Playfair-Austin August 1928- when the Peachums were version of The Beggar's Opera. Even played by Erich Ponto (familiar to today's Benjamin Britten, when he came to make fans of Carol Reed's postwar film The his own masterly version of The Beggar's Third Man) and Rosa Valetti, Macheath Opera, expressed the hope that after by the operetta tenor Harald Paulsen, and Brecht and Weill the gentility of the 1920 Jenny by Lotte Lenya. The well-known version was a thing of the past. It was Lewis Ruth Band was conducted by Theo then left to a later generation of British Mackeben. composers to consider and rightly reject But for the last-minute interpolation of the notion of yet another Beggar's Opera, the 11 Die Moritat von Mackie Messer 11 in which the new target would be the (The Ballad of Mack the Knife), the composer of Gloriana. audience on that first night would have Even if Aufricht had settled for a lesser found that the harshly neo-classical and composer or simply an arranger, it is somewhat Stravinskian overture was barely conceivable that in 1928 something 11 11 followed by an almost purely classical so old-hat as Wagner-parody would have version of Peachum's opening song from been attempted. Yet Wagner was still the The Beggar's Opera. Weill's reasons for arch-enemy of the day, whereas the retaining this song and no other still Handel revival of the 1920s was in no way remain a matter for speculation, aided, a relevant target for Brecht, let alone for one hopes, by ethno-musicological We ill. research (a liturgical origin, perhaps Spanish or Sephardic, would not be In Brecht as in Gay, the only dramatic surprising); but in any event the song juncture at which parody, as distinct from clearly relates to his conception of the irony, is musically indispensable is at the third finale, and in particular to the announcement of the Happy End. Weill's closing chorale (which Aufricht, finding it response to the King's Messenger and the 11 11 too Bachian , wanted to cut, and Cas par royal pardon is immediate and hilarious; Neher, the designer and Weill's future eo yet the hilarity is no less swiftly suppressed, librettist, stoutly defended). in the interests of a deeply paradoxical conclusion - a happy end that is nothing of Because The Beggar's Opera was, among the sort. many other things, a parody of the fashionable Handelian opera, the notion That ending is one of the many reasons why that Die Dreigroschenoper is likewise the 11 suppressed 11 aria of Lucy remains a parodistic has proved as persistent as it's bone of contention. As a parody from first misleading. When Hindemith's publishers to last, it is plainly at odds with the rest of eo mmended The Beggar's Opera to his the numbers. As parody nevertheless- and playful attention in 1925, they suggested the allusions are to some of Weill's favourite it as a parody of Eugen d 'Albert - not composers - it prepares for the arrival of the exactly the Handel of his day, popular King's Messenger, while threatening to though his Tie (land was (and still is) in preempt it. What the composer' verdict might Germany. Why not Richard Strauss or, be today is anybody's guess. The only concert 14 performance of Die Dreigroschenoper he ever This evening's performance is the first in heard about, and probably the only one in his public to use the new scholarly edition of lifetime, was given in London in 1935, as part Die Dreigroschenoper, edited by Stephen of the BBC's Contemporary Music series at Hinton and Edward Harsh, and due for the Queen's Hall. It was duly castigated by publication early in the year 2000 as Vol.I Ernest Newman and other distinguished of the Kurt Weill Edition (whose 'Facsimile critics. Perhaps in memory of that sorry of the Holograph Full Score' has already occasion, Weill would have welcomed an been published in a preliminary volume). opportunity for Lucy to vent her feelings All 23 instruments that Weill distributed once agam. among the original 7 -piece band by dint of David Drew complex doublings that were feasible at that time, are incorporated, and the band is accordingly much enlarged.

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