|
COPYRIGHT 2007 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.
Bertolt Brecht, the great politicizer of art, thought that opera was too laden with tradition to deliver shocks to the social order. As far as he was concerned, "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," his 1930 collaboration with Kurt Weill, fell into the category of "culinary opera"--a medium of transient pleasure, even if it managed to leave a delectably bitter taste in the mouths of the middle classes. Weill, though, believed that opera could comprehensively synthesize art, entertainment, and critique, and "Mahagonny," which progresses implacably from the vinegar pop of the "Alabama Song" to the Mahlerian hammer blows of the final scene, crystallized his vision. Indeed, Brecht spoke slightingly of the project in large part because Weill made it his own; it's less a piece of up-to-date agitprop than a timeless morality tale, describing an Everyman's downfall in an unusually diverting hell on earth. For a long time, it was fashionable to dismiss Weill as the lesser of the two collaborators, because he gave up leftist composition in favor of a comfortable Broadway career; yet his conception of musical theatre as an art-pop hybrid has proved to be one of the twentieth century's enduring legacies, reverently cited every time an ambitious young composer tries to shake up the routines of risk-averse Broadway theatres or opera houses.
"Mahagonny" is having a cultural moment. A production by John Doyle, who recently directed "Sweeney Todd" and...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
