Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed on 9 March 1930 at the Neues Theater in Leipzig.
The Threepenny Opera is a "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, Hauptmann might have contributed to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.
Kurt Julian Weill was a German 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. He also wrote several works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
Hanns Eisler was an Austrian composer. He is best known for composing the national anthem of East Germany, for his long artistic association with Bertolt Brecht, and for the scores he wrote for films. The Hochschule für Musik "Hanns Eisler" is named after him.
"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 has become a popular standard recorded by many artists, including a US and UK number one hit for Bobby Darin in 1959.
Friedrich Wilhelm Ernst Busch was a German singer and actor.
Dagmar Krause is a German singer, best known for her work with avant-rock groups including Slapp Happy, Henry Cow, and Art Bears. She is also noted for her coverage of songs by Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Her unusual singing style makes her voice instantly recognisable and has defined the sound of many of the bands with whom she has worked.
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.
Der Silbersee: ein Wintermärchen is a 'play with music' in three acts by Kurt Weill to a German text by Georg Kaiser. The subtitle is an allusion to Heinrich Heine's 1844 satirical epic poem, Germany. A Winter's Tale.
Duck and Cover were a multinational avant-rock septet founded in West Germany in 1983, comprising Chris Cutler (UK), Heiner Goebbels (GER), and Alfred Harth (GER) from Cassiber; Tom Cora (US) and Fred Frith (UK) from Skeleton Crew; Dagmar Krause (GER) from Art Bears; and George Lewis (US) from the ICP Orchestra. The ensemble was initially commissioned for the 1983 Moers Festival at the request of festival director Burkhard Hennen to Alfred Harth.
Tank Battles: The Songs of Hanns Eisler is a solo album by German singer Dagmar Krause released by Island Records in 1988. It is a collection of 26 songs by German composer Hanns Eisler sung by Krause in English. She also sang the songs in the original German which were released by Island at the same time on a companion album, Panzerschlacht: Die Lieder von Hanns Eisler.
The Flying Lizards is the 1979 self-titled debut album by The Flying Lizards and was released on the Virgin Records label.
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 lifelong 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 so-called V-effect.
20th Century Blues is a live 1996 album by British singer-actress Marianne Faithfull, in collaboration with pianist Paul Trueblood.
Carmen-Maja Antoni is a German actress.
The Berlin Requiem is a 1928 composition for tenor, baritone, and choir of three male voices and orchestra by Kurt Weill to poems by Bertolt Brecht. The work had been commissioned by the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft who intended to broadcast the work on all its stations. However Brecht failed to abide by his contractual obligation to show the poems to the commissioning body for advance approval and the content, some of it a memorial to Rosa Luxemburg, led to several stations banning the performance.
In late 1928 Kurt Weill accepted a commission from Radio Frankfurt for a new work, which he duly fulfilled with Das Berliner Requiem. In collaboration with Bertolt Brecht, Weill selected several of Brecht's preexisting poems in order to craft what he termed a "secular requiem that gives voice to contemporary Man's feelings about death." All of the texts used in the Berlin Requiem deal specifically with forgotten dead; faceless war casualties, or victims of violent crime whose bodies are disposed of in an undetected location. The work is economically scored for three-voice male chorus, wind band, guitar, banjo, and organ. Often the accompaniment texture is extremely spare, with much of the "Ballade vom ertrunkenen Mädchen" supported by guitar alone.
Sonja Kehler was a German actress and chanson singer, known internationally for her interpretation of works by Bertolt Brecht, first playing his characters on the theatre stage, then focused on singing his songs and those of others in solo programs. She also taught acting in Danish at the theatre academy in Odense, appeared in films, worked as stage director and presented literary programs.
Liselotte Malkowsky was a German singer, actress, and cabaret artist.
Roswitha Trexler is a German operatic soprano and mezzo-soprano who became internationally known especially as an interpreter of the music of Hans Eisler and for her commitment to avantgarde vocal music.
Erik Wirl was a German operatic tenor and actor.
