The Beggar’s Orpea lived on for years from its premiere in 1728 – the improbable success story of London theatre. It made its permanent mark in turning the audiences away from Italian opera seria. And the audience reaction swiveled Handel away from the operas that had made him famous to oratorios (Saul 1739, Messiah 1741, Hercules 1745). (We’ll return to Handel later.)
But it also turned operatic theatre and operatic music away from the established modes.
Yet another new sort of opera
Fast forward two centuries. The Beggar’s Opera was rewritten, recomposed, relocated in time and place and completely transformed to be launched in Berlin as Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) by playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill in 1928). It was still about corruptions and betrayals, class and criminality, still a vicious comedy, but broadened into an attack on bourgeois values, now of Wiemar Germany, and it presented more explicitly than Gay had pictured the woes of 18th-century England.
“In Gay's script the main parodic device is class reversal: the thieves act like courtiers. Brecht made the social contrast more explicit, for the criminals and prostitutes were presented as growing capitalists in a modern landscape where a brothel becomes a “middleclass idyll” and petty thievery seems meaningless in comparison to the subtler and more pervasive results of the founding of a bank. Like Gay. Brecht used his portrayal of organized crime as a mirror reflecting the hysterical political world of his time, but it also allowed him to develop one of his favorite themes: the impossibility of moral behavior in an immoral world.” More here.
And this required a new sort of ‘epic’ theatre, non-naturalistic acting, jolting drama interspersed by commentary.
“Brecht utilized such techniques to achieve his goals of breaking down the division between high art and popular culture, and using theater as a platform to advance his political ideals. Commenting on The Threepenny Opera in the program notes of a 1928 performance, he said that the work confronted “the same sociological situation as The Beggar’s Opera: just like 200 years ago, we have a social order in which virtually all strata of the population, albeit in extremely varied ways, follow moral principles—not, of course, by living within a moral code but off it.”
This opera was Brecht’s first financial success, and product of a brief partnership with the very different Weill. Weill’s wife, Lotte Lenya, played Jenny Diver a role exemplifying the new sort of theatre. Watch her “Pirate Jenny” song from the 1931 film (more later on this) here. This story goes on and on – Lotte Lenya won a Tony for her performance of the role, in Greenwich Village, in English, in 1956 - she and Kurt Weill had escaped Germany after the opera was banned by the Nazis, and settled in the US. Here’s her Pirate Jenny in English in 1954.
The relationship of this opera to its century-old ancestor is fascinating. It still has Peacham, Polly and Macheath, as well as the dubious head of police – and it uses the same names for the prostitutes, here seen in grungy, grimy 1920s Berlin. But the plot is radically changed, and the words rewritten. Which had to happen because these characters are no longer parodying ballads and folk songs, but singing their agonies to a jazz-influenced score many saw as Kurt Weill’s triumph. You can read the full words of the play here.
An opera reduced to a hit song?
It’s the swinging, thudding, song of ‘Mac the Knife’ that is known now, though the whole opera is often performed. The song was adopted by America, via Bobby Darrin and then Louis Armstrong, and Ella Fitzgerald took it back to Berlin in 1960. The sharp, snarling English lyrics, by Mark Blitzstein, slammed it in single syllable words, into the theme of violence. The US music world took up this improbable celebration of a crook – the story is here.
Here’s the German original, ‘Mackie Messer’. Here’s Bobby Darrin’s smooth, crooning improbably peaceful version. (The lyrics are there in case you still haven’t got them!) And here’s Ella in Berlin, proving that the words are pretty irrelevant!
But it was the musical whole that made Threepenny Opera a success. With the exception of one number, “Peachum’s Morning Hymn,” the music was all newly composed by Weill. By the time Weill met Brecht, he had already distinguished himself as a composer of classical works for the concert hall. While his jazz-influenced score for The Threepenny Opera represented a new direction for his own work and for musical theater in general, Weill saw it as part of the continuing evolution of the classical opera tradition, noting in a 1929 interview with the Austrian newspaper Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung that “this type of music is the most consistent reaction to Wagner. It signifies the complete destruction of the concept of music drama."
In a 1928 review for the Berlin newspaper Die Zeit, A. Ebbutt wrote that The Threepenny Opera “is not … a morality play, it is not a revue, it is not a conventional burlesque, and it is not The Beggar’s Opera; but it is an interesting combination of them illustrating the progress of a movement towards freeing music, acting, and the cinematograph from the ruts of Italian opera, Wagnerian music-drama, drawing-room comedy, and Hollywood, and creating something new with them.” The work’s energy and freshness have won over audiences ever since.”
Which makes Pirate Jenny perhaps the most significant song in this work. No it's not in the Beggar's Opera, though Jenny Diver is there as a vicious, revengeful creature of the society. In Brecht's version, she dreams her revenge. Lyrics here. And that song lasted as it crossed the Atlantic. Here's Nina Simone in Carnegie Hall, 1964.
And the opera today?
So does it travel further, beyond prewar Germany? . Most attempted updatings have been widely criticised. Productions have come and gone in UK, Australia and the US. Vic Opera played it in 2010 – here’s Richard Gill’s ad! Review here Reviews give you insight into the ways the opera is rooted in 1920s Berlin. Here’s the Guardian review of the National theatre 2017 production. Slightly more sympathetic, and lots more informative is this writeup. ‘Watching a rather solemn rehearsal of The Threepenny Opera in the United States, in the 1950s, Bertolt Brecht voiced a loud objection: ‘Das ist nicht spass!’ (This is no fun!’) However serious, or indeed didactic, the show, it still better to be fun. That is, sharp, funny and entertaining – plus ravishing the audience with insights about their world.’ View a preview here.
And then... the film
This may be the most travelled opera in stage history – and that’s before it was filmed, in a classic work by G.W. Pabst.
'The sly melodies of composer Kurt Weill and the daring of dramatist Bertolt Brecht come together on-screen under the direction of German auteur G. W. Pabst (Pandora’s Box) in this classic adaptation of the Weimar-era theatrical sensation. Set in the impoverished back alleys of Victorian London, The Threepenny Opera follows underworld antihero Mackie Messer (a.k.a. Mack the Knife) as he tries to woo Polly Peachum and elude the authorities. With its palpable evocation of corruption and dread, set to Weill’s irresistible score, The Threepenny Opera remains a benchmark of early sound cinema.' So reads the promotion of the (brilliant) reproduction of this old film. Go here for their podcast about the film.
But it was neither Brecht's nor Gay's opera! There’s a splendid account of the making of opera and film here.
'The contrast was striking. Bertolt Brecht’s Three Penny Opera was an anarchistic vision of urban society, tempered by a sharp cynical wit, and an episodic form that had its roots in the cabaret. G.H. Pabst’s less cynical film version, on the other hand, presented a dramatically unified narrative, enhanced by realistic studio sets, and an expressive use of light and shadow. Critics regarded it as a typical case of an insensitive, bourgeois-capitalist film industry draining an avant-garde work of its revolutionary content (and form) for the sake of profit. Brecht sued the producers but lost, proving once again to B.B.’s supporters the power of private investment over public interest, capital over art.' Read more here about the film and its changes - and the war between Pabst and Brecht.
The very informing discussion of the opera and the film which we dipped into is here in full.
(Participants are Michael Pabst (son of the director, GW Pabst), Eric Bentley Brecht translator, Jan-Christopher Horak film scholar.)
‘Brecht stole, but he stole with genius’ – the discussion emphasizes the embarrassment for Brecht at the opera's worldwide success.
Far from Gay! Mackie is now turned into bourgeois character, making the ideologically required connection between gangsters and capitalists. It's arguably not an opera... but it made a brilliant film!
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