Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht: Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, The
Royal Opera Encore, Phoenix Picturehouse, Oxford, 6 April 2015.
The composer
Kurt Weill and the dramatist Berthold Brecht had a long collaboration in
depicting, in a series of musical-dramatic works, the decadence, corruption and
venality seen from a German perspective in the years leading up to the rise of
Nazism in the inter-war years when both had to face exile in the United States,
Brecht originally in Scandinavia. The full-length opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny composed between 1927 and
1929 and first performed in 1930 can be regarded as the peak of this
collaboration. This revival at the Royal Opera House in an English version by
Jeremy Sands and directed by John Fulljames is a multi-media tour de force bringing home a stinging
relevance to the present day.
Three fugitives are fleeing across the desert when their lorry breaks down. They decide to make money by building a new city devoted to pleasure. All goes well until falling prices bring about a financial crisis which is overcome by expanding the population by allowing even more permissive behaviour.
The main protagonists in the opera are the three founders of the City who preside over the events, played by a distinguished trio Anne Sofie von Otter, Peter Hoar and Willard White. The population is represented by four friends willing to spend fortunes made in Alaska: Jimmy (the principal anti-hero, performed by Kurt Streit) who purchases for thirty dollars the sex-slave Jenny (Christine Rice) and in the end is executed for debt and offences of immorality by a corrupt legal system, obese Jack (Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts) who dies of gluttony, Joe (Neal Davies) killed in a prize fight and Bill (Darren Jeffrey) who survives, having refused to help Jimmy, and inherits Jenny.
In fact, there is nothing here which cannot be found in today’s newspapers. Only missing are bankers, PPI, expenses, drugs and paedophilia in high places. The scene in which trouserless citizens queue for the services of Jenny and her colleagues, which so shocked Otto Klemperer at the time that it delayed the first production and was omitted, hardly causes a stir. It is to the Director’s credit that he has resisted the temptation to reset the opera in twenty-first century London but rigorously follows the original scenario.
The result is a mind-blowing, multi-media experience, even or perhaps more so in the cinema. The set is the broken down lorry in the desert with video- projected slogans reminiscent of those in Orwell’s Animal Farm. The singing is as good as it needs to be for Weill’s Jazz Age style, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth; the words are clear. But the main credits go to the Designers of Set Es Devlin, Costumes Christina Cunningham, Lighting Bruno Poet and Video Finn Ross and, for the cinema audience, to Screen Director Rhodri Hughes and to the Director John Fulljames. It is the visual impact which remains.
11 April 2015
Three fugitives are fleeing across the desert when their lorry breaks down. They decide to make money by building a new city devoted to pleasure. All goes well until falling prices bring about a financial crisis which is overcome by expanding the population by allowing even more permissive behaviour.
The main protagonists in the opera are the three founders of the City who preside over the events, played by a distinguished trio Anne Sofie von Otter, Peter Hoar and Willard White. The population is represented by four friends willing to spend fortunes made in Alaska: Jimmy (the principal anti-hero, performed by Kurt Streit) who purchases for thirty dollars the sex-slave Jenny (Christine Rice) and in the end is executed for debt and offences of immorality by a corrupt legal system, obese Jack (Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts) who dies of gluttony, Joe (Neal Davies) killed in a prize fight and Bill (Darren Jeffrey) who survives, having refused to help Jimmy, and inherits Jenny.
In fact, there is nothing here which cannot be found in today’s newspapers. Only missing are bankers, PPI, expenses, drugs and paedophilia in high places. The scene in which trouserless citizens queue for the services of Jenny and her colleagues, which so shocked Otto Klemperer at the time that it delayed the first production and was omitted, hardly causes a stir. It is to the Director’s credit that he has resisted the temptation to reset the opera in twenty-first century London but rigorously follows the original scenario.
The result is a mind-blowing, multi-media experience, even or perhaps more so in the cinema. The set is the broken down lorry in the desert with video- projected slogans reminiscent of those in Orwell’s Animal Farm. The singing is as good as it needs to be for Weill’s Jazz Age style, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth; the words are clear. But the main credits go to the Designers of Set Es Devlin, Costumes Christina Cunningham, Lighting Bruno Poet and Video Finn Ross and, for the cinema audience, to Screen Director Rhodri Hughes and to the Director John Fulljames. It is the visual impact which remains.
11 April 2015