Drama · Music

Brecht & Weill: Die Dreigroschenoper Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2023

Theater director Thomas Ostermeier stages Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's timelessly magnificent "Threepenny Opera" with the ensemble of the Comédie Française in Aix-en-Provence, based on a new translation of the original text by Alexandre Pateau. In London's underworld district of Soho, the beggar king Jonathan Peachum and the criminal Macheath, known as Mackie Messer, are at war. The latter also seduces the daughter of the shady "businessman". When he finds out that the two have secretly celebrated a wedding, he decides to get rid of his rival. He is aided in his endeavors by Jenny, a cunning whore who betrays her ex-lover to the police. Back to the original: First performed in 1928, the opera parody strings together one biting musical number after another in cabaret style and jazz rhythm, breaking the boundaries of the genre, which until then had been considered bourgeois. Because the "Threepenny Opera" by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill is clearly political!