Yet this kind of ironic gesture toward the art form wouldn’t be out of character for them coming from Kosky, it’s a subtle tribute, and a blazing declaration of independence. The line “I’m not asking for an opera here” dates back to the ’20s, but Weill and Brecht never wrote what follows - nor did their essential collaborator Elisabeth Hauptmann, who with this production is finally getting proper billing alongside them after decades of neglect. He flips through the pages while humming the show’s big hit, “Mack the Knife,” tears them up and throws the scraps into a metal bucket. BERLIN - “I’m not asking for an opera here,” the notorious criminal Macheath says at his wedding, early in a work that happens to be called “Die Dreigroschenoper” (“The Threepenny Opera”).Īnd in Barrie Kosky’s hauntingly enjoyable new production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s famous “play with music” for the Berliner Ensemble - at the theater where it premiered in 1928 - Macheath then reaches into the orchestra pit in search of nuptial entertainment and steals the “Threepenny” score from the conductor’s stand.

Threepenny opera music