Weill's 'Three-Penny Opera' in Berlin

Synopsis

On today’s date in 1928, Kurt Weill’s Three Penny Opera, whose cast members portrayed thieves, murderers,and sex workers, debuted at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin.

The Three-Penny Opera was a 20th century updating of The Beggar’s Opera, a satirical 18th century British ballad-opera by John Gay. A new German text was provided by playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill provided a jazzy score.

The opera was a smash success in Berlin, and within a year was taken up by theaters all over Europe. But in 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, all performances of The Three Penny Opera were banned, since Weill was Jewish and Brecht was a communist sympathizer.

Just as it was being banned in Germany, its 1933 American premiere in New York was a flop, and the show closed after only a dozen performances. It wasn’t until 1952 that it was successfully revived in America. With a new English translation by the American composer Marc Bliztstein, The Three Penny Opera was reintroduced by Leonard Bernstein at a Music Festival at Brandeis University, and in 1954 reopened off-broadway in Greenwich Village to sold-out houses and rave reviews.

Music Played in Today's Program

Kurt Weill (1900-1950): Three Penny Opera; Suite Canadian Chamber Ensemble; Raffi Armenian, conductor; CBC 5010

On This Day

Births

• 1834 - Italian opera composer Amilcare Ponchielli, in Paderno Fasolaro, Cremona;

Premieres

• 1928 - Kurt Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper (The Three-Penny Opera) in Berlin at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, to a libretto by German poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht

• 1970 - Birtwistle: Verses for Ensembles, in London

• 2000 - Philip Glass: opera In the Penal Colony (based on a story by Franz Kafka), by A Contemporary Theatre (ACT) in Seattle.