Composers Datebook

On today's date in 1928, Kurt Weill's "Three Penny Opera" debuted at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, a small but opulent Baroque-style theater in Berlin. It must have seemed a rather ironic setting for Kurt Weill's "opera for beggars," whose cast members portrayed thieves, murderers, prostitutes and other low-life. "The Three-Penny Opera" was a 20th century updating of an 18th century British ballad-opera by John Gay, titled "The Beggar's Opera." The new German text was provided by playwright Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill provided a jazzy score, which was played by the seven piece Ruth Lewis Band, led by its keyboard player, Theo Mackeben. "The Three Penny Opera" was a smash success, and within a year was taken up by theaters all over Europe. But in 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, all performances of "The Three Penny Opera" were banned, since Kurt Weill was Jewish, and Bertolt Brecht was a communist sympathizer. Ironically, just as "The Three Penny Opera" was being banned in Germany, its American premiere in 1933 was a flop, and the show closed after only a dozen performances in New York. It wasn't until 1952 that "The Three Penny" opera was successfully staged in America. In a new English translation by the American composer Marc Bliztstein, the "Three Penny Opera" was reintroduced by Leonard Bernstein at a Music Festival at Brandeis University, and in 1954 reopened off Broadway in Greenwich Village to sold-out houses and rave reviews.