Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti

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Arcade Pub., 1997 - 155 Seiten
Long unavailable in this country, Mr. Puntila and His Man Matti comprises some of the best comedy that Bertolt Brecht wrote for the theater and contains one of his great characters. For his complexity and vitality, Mr. Puntila ranks on a par with Brecht's indelible Galileo and Mother Courage. A hard-drinking landowner, Puntila suffers from a split personality: when drunk, he is friendly and humane; when he sobers up, he is intolerable - ruthless, surly, and self-centered. Oscillating between these two poles, he plays havoc with his workers, his women, his daughter's marriage, and the loyalty of his sardonic chauffeur and valet, Matti. This translation is by John Willett, who with Ralph Manheim is the editor of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English. The joint editors have equipped this volume with a critical introduction and notes, along with Brecht's own notes and variants and the short story on which the play was based.

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Inhalt

A Finnish Bacchus by Hella Wuolijoki
100
Texts by Brecht
110
Notes on the Berliner Ensemble Production
118
Urheberrecht

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Autoren-Profil (1997)

Bertolt Brecht was born on February 10, 1898 in Augsburg, Bavaria, and died on August 14, 1956. He was a German playwright, theatre director and Marxist. The modest house where he was born is today preserved as a Brecht Museum. Brecht formed a writing collective which became prolific and very influential. He wrote many lyrics for musicals and collaborated with Kurt Weill to create Die Dregroschenoper -- the biggest hit in 1920s Berlin. Brecht experimented with his own theater and company -- the Berliner Ensemble -- which put on his plays under his direction and which continued after his death with the assistance of his wife. Brecht aspired to create political theater, and it is difficult to evaluate his work in purely aesthetic terms. Brecht died in 1956.

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