"In the hedonistic city of Mahagonny, almost everything is allowed. Eating, sex, fighting and getting drunk are celebrated. But everything has its price. A designer town, built from scratch by three criminals on the run from justice, seems like an implausible starting point, yet the city grows quickly as people flock to enjoy a lifestyle with no boundaries. Director Jamie Manton's Mahagonny is a contemporised city, somewhere towards the Gulf of Mexico,"
"The piece is often seen as a transition for both artists: for Brecht, as his thinking moved more decisively towards Marxism, to the extent that he even published a more overtly political third version of the libretto, a step that helped drive a wedge between him and Weill; and for Weill, as he experimented across a spectrum from grand opera to music theatre."
The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny portrays a manufactured boom-town where hedonism and unfettered consumerism flourish until consequences emerge. The opera evolved from the 1927 Mahagonny Songspiel into a full-scale work during a pivotal Weill–Brecht collaboration and marks a stylistic transition: Brecht shifted toward Marxist politics and produced a more overtly political libretto, while Weill ranged between grand opera and music-theatre textures. Musically, cabaret-like songs are integrated into a denser operatic fabric and the work was intended for trained opera singers. Jamie Manton stages a contemporised, Gulf-of-Mexico–adjacent metropolis with stark sets by Milla Clarke.
Read at London Unattached
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