Weill: Threepenny Opera

[Bryn]

Somewhat OT but worth investigating two 5 CD sets of Weill conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig (the spelling he prefers):



Both can be found for a total outlay of less than £30.

[Sir Velo]

Somewhat OT but worth investigating two 5 CD sets of Weill conducted by Jan Latham-Koenig (the spelling he prefers):



Both can be found for a total outlay of less than £30.

I didn't know Jan was such a looker.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I didn't know Jan was such a looker.

Don't be silly; that's Kurt!

[LeMartinPecheur]

Also a good recent version from HK Gruber. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Weill-Dreig.../dp/B00001R3MQ

Thanks, gurnemanz: I have invested.

But would Bert Brecht (or even Kurt Weill, 1928 model) have liked my choice of verb...??

[Nick Armstrong]

Has anyone ever seen this work?

Yes, more than once (including being in it!). It was the final school production I was in, as trombonist (loved playing the solo in the Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit) in the orchestra - we were on stage as a kind of street band, so I saw the whole thing repeatedly!

And then in the late 80s I had friends living in Berlin, and on one visit, I suspect in December 1988 (I remember it was snowy and freezing), we crossed through Checkpoint Charlie and went to a production at/by Brecht's own Berliner Ensemble. Can't actually remember much about the production, but the experience of going to 'The East' was unforgettable...

[LeMartinPecheur]

Thanks, gurnemanz: I have invested.

Gurnemanz, even bigger thanks now I have heard these discs. [Yes it runs to two, but no extra cost.] It has given me a much better idea of how the work might have sounded in its first (1928) production and why this was a runaway success.

It seems an easy work to misconstrue completely. The success of the Mack the Knife song, inserted a day or so before the opening, seems to get things off on the wrong foot. Though we haven't yet met him it tells us that Mack is a great big villain (robber, murderer and rapist). But is this how he comes over in the rest of the show? Absolutely not. He runs a pathetic little gang that just about manages to steal enough furniture to mount a wedding breakfast. But ionly in a tatty dockside stable! OK, he's something of a success with the 'ladies' (whores and a previous wife Lucy), but as for murder and robbery we see next to nothing: he's a semi-successful semi-bourgeois who aspires upwards but is short of dosh. He's even prepared to consider being moral, but only when he's no longer hungry. He is therefore very close to the Weimar theatre-goers who are therefore prepared to laugh at themselves in him. No big socialist message, just a bit of fun-poking. [Brecht of course was quick to ramp up the socilaist message in Pabst's film-version a couple of years later, and in later rewrites.]

This HK Gruber version is surely an essential corrective. It is convincingly paced, helped by restoration of instrumental reprises to give time for essential stage action. The linking narrations explaining the plot are more helpful (and less hectoring) than in the old CBS and the Mauceri versions, helped by Gruber's use of some later Brecht rewrites. Even more importantly IMO, Polly Peachum gets the 'Pirate Jenny' song restored to her as originally intended, which makes her much less of a blank-slate character. She can imagine herself as a murdering pirate so she may well be capable of being one, so her attraction towards Macheath, and her willingness and ability to take over his crime syndicate - such as it is - is vastly more convincing.

Also crucial is careful choice of voices. The Streetsinger in Mack the Knife is vastly less creaky-geriatric than Mauceri's. The Macheath is less grand-opera, more singing-actor than Mauceri's Kollo. Polly and Jenny are bright-voiced with no trace of late-vintage Lenya, Gruber himself convinces as Peachum. The only possible blot is the very croaky Mrs P. But she is convinces in the part, though I do wish she could sing the Ballad of Sexual Dependency a teeny bit more lyrically But still far and away the most convincingly theatrical Threepenny Opera in my book.

[Bryn]

Oh yes, just about all of them, but that was back in the late '70s or early '80s. They included a very full production of The Threepenny Opera in a suitably earthy English translation. The same era also had fine, full length productions of Gay's The Beggar's Opera and its sequel, Polly.

I had quite forgotten that, when I first got a CD burner in 1998, I transferred the very full 5 October 1978 Radio 3 Threepenny Opera production (in a suitably fruity English translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett) to 3 CD-Rs. Just now, searching out my copy of the H K Gruber discs I rediscovered those CD-Rs and though the cassettes they were transferred from came from an FM broadcast replete with occasional birdies, etc., I am very please to have found them. I had the good sense to include the presentation spiel too. I will back them up straight away. If anyone would like to hear this production, PM me.

19.30: The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschcnoper)

A play with music in a Prologue and Three Acts, after The Beggar's Opera by JOHN GAY
Words by Bertolt Brecht Music by Kurt Weill
English translation by RALPH MANHEIM and JOHN WILLETT
Brecht and Weill wrote their updated version of The Beggar's Opera in 1928 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of Gay's original. Now. 50 years on the BBC marks the birth of this most famous product of their collaboration.
Starring in alphabetical order: Sarah Bade ), Paul Bentley
Harold Kasket. Julia McKenzie Johanna Peters , Peter Pratt Jan Waters
Pollys songs sung by ELAINE PADMORE
INSTRUMENTAL ENSEMBLE conducted by MARCUS DODS coach NEIL RHODEN
Technical presentation PETER NOVIS , MARTIN PAGE , PETER SIDHOM. Produced and directed bv IAN COTTERELL and ELAINE PADMORE. Act 1
(Julia McKenzie Is in ' Ten Times Table' at the Globe Theatre, London) g.25* Interval Reading
8.30* The Threepenny Opera Act 2
9.25* Interval Reading
9.30* The Threepenny Opera Act 3

Music By: Kurt Weill

Narrator: John Hollis
Ballad Singer: Roderick Horn
Mr Peachum: Harold Kasket
Filch: Andrew Branch
Mrs Peachum: Johanna Peters
Matthew: John Hollis
Macheath: Paul Bentley
Polly Peachum: Sarah Badel
Jake: Bill Monks
Bob: Roy Spencer
Ned: Manning Wilson
Jimmy: Roderick Horn
Rev Kimball: Peter Williams
Tiger Brown: Peter Pratt
Low-Dive Jenny: Julia McKenzie
Vixen: Heather Bell
Vixen: Sarah Badel
Betty: Rachel Cook
Old Whore: Hilda Kriseman
Smith: Roderick Horn
Lucy Brown: Jan Waters

[LeMartinPecheur]

Anyone else seen this week's production of Threepenny Opera by RAM students at Shoreditch Town Hall? I was in London on business and just scraped in on Thurs, though missing the first 10 mins

There's an online review https://bachtrack.com/review-threepe...pera-june-2017 which IMHO gets it about right, though I'd be even stronger: this is surely a play-with-music, much nearer cabaret than opera or even operetta, and therefore demands singing actors not well-schooled classical singers. The very bel-canto Pirate Jenny song was indeed gorgeous as classical singing but that completely misses the point. Same goes for most of the performers and the basic production, though the disclosure behind Macheath, just after his own escape from hanging, of the rest of the cast pulling up their necks in their own halters did pack a proper theatrical punch.

I'm due to retire soon and have now decided my modest leaving present will have to be teleportation to the Berlin premiere

[cloughie]

Anyone else seen this week's production of Threepenny Opera by RAM students at Shoreditch Town Hall? I was in London on business and just scraped in on Thurs, though missing the first 10 mins

There's an online review https://bachtrack.com/review-threepe...pera-june-2017 which IMHO gets it about right, though I'd be even stronger: this is surely a play-with-music, much nearer cabaret than opera or even operetta, and therefore demands singing actors not well-schooled classical singers. The very bel-canto Pirate Jenny song was indeed gorgeous as classical singing but that completely misses the point. Same goes for most of the performers and the basic production, though the disclosure behind Macheath, just after his own escape from hanging, of the rest of the cast pulling up their necks in their own halters did pack a proper theatrical punch.

I'm due to retire soon and have now decided my modest leaving present will have to be teleportation to the Berlin premiere

LMP - ever heard Judy Collins singing Pirate Jenny. She tells the story wonderfully. It is on the, to my mind, wonderful album, 'In my life' which had the benefit of Joshua Rifkin's arrangements and production. As well as the title track there is also one of the best interpretations ever of Randy Newman's 'I think it's gonna rain today'. Well worth a listen.

[Bryn]

I have not seen or heard the production referred to in the opening message but would refer back to messages #7 and #22 where I linked to information about the 1978 Radio 3 production. It was superb.

[LeMartinPecheur]

LMP - ever heard Judy Collins singing Pirate Jenny. She tells the story wonderfully. It is on the, to my mind, wonderful album, 'In my life' which had the benefit of Joshua Rifkin's arrangements and production. As well as the title track there is also one of the best interpretations ever of Randy Newman's 'I think it's gonna rain today'. Well worth a listen.

Cloughie: no, but I have now! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NFAg8x6AXQY) Much, much more like it, though I still want my "Fifty guns loaded"

Glad to have seen that and I might just buy the album. I liked some Judy Collins a lot years back but didn't follow it up

Joshua Rifkin eh? Must be authentic, and hip, then