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Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny in Madrid

Oct. 06, 2010

For his first new production as artistic director of Madrid’s Teatro Real, Gérard Mortier has chosen Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Directed by Alex Ollé and Carlus Padrissa of the cutting-edge Catalan theater company, La Fura dels Baus, and conducted by the young Spanish star Pablo Heras-Casado, Mahagonny opened to critical acclaim on September 30. See what critics are saying:

There was not anger or even polemic. The much-feared new production by Gérard Mortier in the Teatro Real of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny resulted in a success on several levels: vocal, orchestral, choral, theatrical, dramatic. This opera is above all an assemblage of different artistic disciplines. In this production they came together like clockwork, and this time it was Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht who benefited the most.
- El Pais , J. Á. Vela Del Campo

With Mahagonny, the first production for which he alone is responsible, Gérard Mortier begins his reign at Madrid’s Teatro Real; and judging by the measure of this premiere production, his beginning can already be called a success.
-Frankfurter Allgemeine, Von Paul Ingendaay

In a new venture similar to the Met’s popular “Live in HD” broadcasts, Teatro Real transmitted a high-definition simulcast of the opening night performance to 124 theaters worldwide. Radio broadcasts are planned over the next few months, and a DVD release will follow.

The Teatro Real Mahagonny is performed in English, using Michael Feingold’s translation from the original German. The cast features Jane Henschel (Leocadia Begbick), Sir Willard White (Trinity Moses), Measha Brueggergosman (Jenny), and Michael König (Jim MacIntyre). In some performances, Jenny will be performed by Elzbieta Szmytka, and Jim by Christopher Ventris.

In Mahagonny, Weill and Brecht created a mythical sin city where money rules, lust runs rampant, and the pursuit of pleasure is paramount. Weill's score crosses over from opera to cabaret to Broadway, incorporating elements of jazz and boisterous music hall numbers. Brecht’s libretto is a scathing satire on greedy capitalism and conventional morality. The work's premiere in Leipzig in 1930 enraged the Nazis, who banned the opera when they assumed power.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny will run at Teatro Real through October 17, then travel to the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow in September 2011.

For more on the production, visit Teatro Real.

Learn more on the life and work of Kurt Weill at Kurt Weill Foundation.

More detailed information can be found on Mahagonny by visiting Universal Edition.

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1927/29)
opera in three acts
text (Ger) by Bertolt Brecht
English translation by Michael Feingold
S, Mz, 3T, 2Bar, B; chorus and orchestra
2(2pic)1.1.ssax.asax.tsax.2(cbsn)-2321-perc.timp-pno.harm ad lib.banjo. bass gtr.bandoneon-str
Stage orchestra: 2(2pic)2.3sax(ssax, asax, tsax)2- 2221-perc-pno.zither or xyl.banjo.bandoneon-3 vn
full evening

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