The Threepenny Opera is a German "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, contribution Hauptmann might have made to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.
Kurt Julian Weill was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose, Gebrauchsmusik. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife" is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their 1928 music drama The Threepenny Opera. The song tells of a knife-wielding criminal of the London underworld from the musical named Macheath, the "Mack the Knife" of the title.
Alice is a 1990 American fantasy romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen and starring Mia Farrow, Joe Mantegna, and William Hurt. The film is a loose reworking of Federico Fellini's 1965 film Juliet of the Spirits.
The "Alabama Song"—also known as "Moon of Alabama", "Moon over Alabama", and "Whisky Bar"—is an English version of a song written by Bertolt Brecht and translated from German by his close collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann in 1925 and set to music by Kurt Weill for the 1927 play Little Mahagonny. It was reused for the 1930 opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and has been recorded by the Doors and David Bowie.
Another Woman is a 1988 American drama film written and directed by Woody Allen. It stars Gena Rowlands as a philosophy professor who accidentally overhears the private analysis of a stranger, and finds the woman's regrets and despair awaken something personal in her.
The Seven Deadly Sins is a satirical ballet chanté in seven scenes composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht in 1933 under a commission from Boris Kochno and Edward James. It was translated into English by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman and more recently by Michael Feingold. It was the last major collaboration between Weill and Brecht.
Happy End is a three-act musical comedy by Kurt Weill, Elisabeth Hauptmann, and Bertolt Brecht which first opened in Berlin at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm on September 2, 1929. It closed after seven performances. In 1977 it premiered on Broadway, where it ran for 75 performances.
Will Holt was an American singer, songwriter, librettist and lyricist. He was known first and primarily as a folk performer during the 1950s, when he made early and influential recordings of such songs as "Sinner Man" and "Lemon Tree", for which he wrote the English lyrics. He later became known as an interpreter of the music of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, and made significant contributions to Broadway theatre during the 1970s.
Death is a play by Woody Allen. It was first published in 1975, along with God, and other short stories in Woody Allen's book Without Feathers. It is a comedic version of Eugène Ionesco's 1959 play The Killer. His 1991 film Shadows and Fog was based on this play.
Mahagonny, ein Songspiel, or Mahagonny, a song-play, was written by composer Kurt Weill and dramatist Bertolt Brecht and first performed with that title and description in 1927. Elisabeth Hauptmann contributed the words to two of its songs. Just under half an hour in length, the work can be thought of as a staged or scenic cantata. By the end of 1929, however, Mahagonny had grown into a two-hour opera with the title Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, or Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. This was premiered in March 1930. Today the cantata and the opera are considered separately, the latter holding a place in the repertory, the former being an occasional piece staged in small theaters or programmed as an outgrowth of a song recital when resources permit. For this reason the shorter work is informally referred to as Das kleine Mahagonny, or The Little Mahagonny, or as Mahagonny-Songspiel.
Anna Prucnal is a Polish actress and singer who worked in film and theatre.
"When the Ship Comes In" is a folk music song by Bob Dylan, released on his third album, The Times They Are a-Changin', in 1964.
"Pirate Jenny" is a well-known song from The Threepenny Opera by Kurt Weill, with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht. The English lyrics are by Marc Blitzstein. It is one of the best known songs in the opera, after "Mack the Knife".
The Threepenny Opera is a 1931 German musical film directed by G. W. Pabst. Produced by Seymour Nebenzal's Nero-Film for Tonbild-Syndikat AG (Tobis), Berlin and Warner Bros. Pictures GmbH, Berlin, the film is loosely based on the 1928 musical theatre success of the same name by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill. As was usual in the early sound film era, Pabst also directed a French language version of the film, L'Opéra de quat'sous, with some variation of plot details. A planned English version went unproduced. The two existing versions were released on home video by The Criterion Collection.
Mysteries of a Barbershop is a comic, slapstick German film of 33 minutes, created by Bertolt Brecht, directed by Erich Engel, and starring the Munich cabaret clown Karl Valentin and leading stage actor Erwin Faber. Brecht reportedly did not write a complete shooting script, but rather produced "notes" and "parts of a manuscript" for this short, silent film and intended the actors to improvise the action. Although the film was not considered a success by any of its creative team, and consequently never released as a profit making film to the public, it has been recognized and acknowledged—since its re-discovery in a Moscow archive in the 1970s—as a considerably important German film.
Let No One Deceive You: Songs of Bertolt Brecht is an album by American folk and blues singer Dave Van Ronk and vocalist Frankie Armstrong, released in 1992. It consists completely of songs by Bertolt Brecht.
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht, known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote The Threepenny Opera with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic Lehrstücke and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre and the Verfremdungseffekt.
September Songs – The Music of Kurt Weill is a music video of 94 minutes recorded in 1994 for Rhombus Media, ZDF (Germany), CBC (Canada) and RTP (Portugal). It was produced and directed by Larry Weinstein, and written by Weinstein and David Mortin. The film was conceived as a follow-up to the album Lost in the Stars: The Music of Kurt Weill whose producer Hal Willner served as the music supervisor in this project. The film was nominated for the 1995 Emmy Awards for Outstanding Cultural Program; it won five Gemini Awards in 1997. An album was released in 1997.
That's All is an album by American singer Bobby Darin released in 1959 and arranged by Richard Wess. It was on the Billboard LP charts for 52 weeks and peaked at number seven. It also includes Darin's US No. 1 hit "Mack the Knife", which spent nine weeks at the top spot, and "Beyond the Sea", which was a Top 10 hit. At the second Grammy Awards, Darin won Record of the Year and Best New Singer.
