Die Dreigroschenoper

The »honourable businessman« Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, the captain of the London beggars' mafia, and his adversary, the dangerous criminal Macheath, better known as Mack the Knife, are bitter rivals. However, because the latter enjoys a good relationship with police chief Brown, he and his men are able to go about their crooked business in the London district of Soho largely undisturbed. But Macheath also has a close relationship with Peachum's daughter Polly. When he and Polly finally marry in secret and Peachum hears of it, the conflict between the two opponents escalates even further. Who is good and who is evil within this multi-layered game of deception remains a fairly open question.

»You will now hear an opera. Because this opera was as magnificently conceived as only a beggar could dream of and because it was to be cheap enough for a beggar to pay for, it is called ›Die Dreigroschenoper‹«. These were the words with which Bertolt Brecht outlined his work, first performed in Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on 31 August 1928. In this, Brecht and the composer Kurt Weill mercilessly scrutinised the hypocrisy of bourgeois attitudes to morality. Many of Weill's musical compositions, in which elements from jazz, tango, blues and fairground music are skilfully combined with ironic sideswipes at the traditions of opera and operetta, instantly became international hits, including the famous »Lied der Seeräuber-Jenny« or the »Moritat von Mackie Messer«.