The Threepenny Opera
by Bertolt Brecht / Music by Kurt Weill / A play with music in a prologue and eight scenes
Marguerre-Saal
Bertolt Brecht’s worldwide success of 1928 portrays a society full of poverty, massive unemployment, crime, corruption and prostitution.
Despite people’s increasingly hardened hearts, the sanctimonious moraliser Jonathan Peachum profits from their wretchedness. He founded a beggars’ emporium which »in five minutes, [...] can turn any man into such a pitiful wreck it would make a dog weep«. The infamous gangster boss Mackie Messer defies Peachum by marrying his daughter Polly. As a consequence, the beggar king demands the immediate arrest of the gangster and blackmails police chief Tiger Brown by threatening massive protests from the beggars.
The »Threepenny Opera« is a study of the defects of a bourgeois society that no longer lives morally but rather lives from morals: »Food is the first thing. Morals follow on.« The Threepenny Opera’s songs describe this in a wonderful and often comic way. Holger Schultze’s staging will see Weill’s music interpreted by Hamburg’s popular band »Tante Polly«, supported by local musicians. Written over 90 years ago, Brecht’s venomous words seem like an analysis and commentary on the economical turbulences of the present. »What’s breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?«
This production is accompanied by a programme from the Arts & Education team.
Trailer by Thiemo Hehl