Reading Order
The Threepenny Opera Reading Order
The Threepenny Opera (1928) by Bertolt Brecht (with music by Kurt Weill) is the most successful theatrical work of the Weimar Republic and the most performed Brecht play — the story of Macheath (Mack the Knife), a criminal gang leader in London, his marriage to Polly Peachum, the opposition of her father Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (who controls the city's beggars), Police Chief Tiger Brown (Macheath's old army friend), and the prostitute Jenny, and the anarchic conclusion in which Macheath is saved from hanging by a royal pardon just in time. Brecht and Weill based the work on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728) and used Gay's structure (the analogy between criminal enterprise and capitalism, which in Gay's version targeted the Whig government and Robert Walpole) to make a 1928 Weimar statement about the equivalence of bourgeois business and gangsterism. 'The Ballad of Mack the Knife' ('Mackie Messer'), the opening number, became the most famous song to come out of the Weimar Republic; Bobby Darin's 1959 jazz version is probably the best-known adaptation.
Where to start
The Threepenny Opera (1928) — in Marc Blitzstein's or Michael Feingold's translation. The play is inseparable from Kurt Weill's music; the 1931 film version by G.W. Pabst (which Brecht hated) and the 1954 New York off-Broadway production with Lotte Lenya as Jenny are the key recorded versions. Best Brecht reading order: The Threepenny Opera → Mother Courage → The Good Woman of Setzuan → Life of Galileo
Complete The Threepenny Opera Book List
- 1Buy
The Threepenny Opera
Bertolt Brecht·1928·The most performed Brecht play — Mack the Knife, Polly Peachum, Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, Tiger Brown, and Jenny. With music by Kurt Weill; based on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (1728). The most successful theatrical work of the Weimar Republic; 'Mack the Knife' became one of the most recorded songs of the twentieth century - 2Buy
Mother Courage and Her Children
Bertolt Brecht·1941·The later companion — Mother Courage, the cart, and the Thirty Years War. Companion investigations of capitalism as the system that organizes modern life: in The Threepenny Opera, capitalism is investigated through the comic-satiric analogy between criminal enterprise and business; in Mother Courage, through the catastrophic analogy between commercial enterprise and war - 3Buy
The Beggar's Opera
John Gay·1728·The source and the companion — Captain Macheath, Polly Peachum, Lucy Lockit, and the eighteenth-century London underworld. Gay's 1728 opera is the source text for The Threepenny Opera; Brecht and Weill updated Gay's satire of Walpole's government into a 1928 satire of the Weimar Republic and capitalism generally - 4Buy
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck·1937·Steinbeck's companion in the literary tradition of the investigation of the relationship between the powerful and the dispossessed — George and Lennie's dream of the farm. Both The Threepenny Opera and Of Mice and Men are investigations of the American/capitalist dream and what happens to the people at the bottom of the system that generates it - 5Buy
Oliver Twist
Charles Dickens·1837·Dickens's companion in the literary tradition of the investigation of criminality and poverty in London — Oliver Twist, Fagin, the Artful Dodger, and Bill Sikes. The Threepenny Opera and Oliver Twist are companion investigations of the relationship between poverty, criminality, and the respectable bourgeois society that generates both - 6Buy
Guys and Dolls
Frank Loesser·1950·Loesser's companion in the theatrical tradition of the musical organized around the underworld of gamblers and criminals — Sky Masterson, Nathan Detroit, Miss Adelaide. Both The Threepenny Opera and Guys and Dolls use the world of crime and its colorful inhabitants to make a point about the relationship between crime and the society that surrounds it: Brecht's is Marxist; Loesser's is gentler, but both recognize the appeal of people who operate outside the law - 7Buy
American Gangster
Mark Jacobson·2007·Jacobson's companion in the tradition of the journalistic investigation of the American criminal as a parallel version of the American businessman — Frank Lucas's heroin empire in New York. Both The Threepenny Opera and American Gangster are investigations of the analogy between criminal enterprise and capitalism: Brecht's is the theatrical version; Jacobson's is the journalistic - 8Buy
Good People
David Lindsay-Abaire·2011·Lindsay-Abaire's companion in the theatrical tradition of the American play about the relationship between class, success, and complicity — Margie Walsh's return to her South Boston neighborhood. Good People and The Threepenny Opera are companion investigations of the question of why some people succeed in the capitalist system and others don't, and what the successful owe to the people they left behind
The Threepenny Opera — Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera?
Mack the Knife is the nickname of Macheath, the protagonist of The Threepenny Opera — a criminal gang leader who is so successful and so charming that the play's satire hinges on the impossibility of distinguishing him from a respectable businessman. The nickname comes from the knife Macheath carries; the 'Ballad of Mack the Knife' ('Mackie Messer') that opens the show lists his crimes (stabbing, fire, rape, murder) in a tone of light, jazzy cheerfulness that is Brecht's primary technique for making the audience complicit in enjoying Mack while ostensibly criticizing him. Macheath's relationship with the Police Chief Tiger Brown (his old army buddy, who looks the other way at Macheath's crimes) is Brecht's image of the relationship between business and government: the two have been friends since they fought together, and their friendship is maintained by mutual benefit. When Macheath is finally arrested (twice — he escapes the first time) and is about to be hanged, he is saved by a royal pardon and then elevated to nobility — a conclusion that Brecht intended as the most biting satire of all: the criminal and the peer are the same person, and the system rewards both.
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