The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny: And, The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeoisie

Cover
Arcade Pub., 1996 - 124 Seiten
The two works collected in this volume sprang from the same fruitful collaboration that gave rise to Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera. Both are set in America, but an America of myth. In The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, Brecht's parable of greed and indifference, Mahagonny is a boom-town fusing Miami with Sodom and Gomorrah. Founded on the principle that it is easier to prospect gold from people's pockets than from the earth, it is a city threatened with catastrophe but also obsessed with pleasure and the problem of how to pay for it. The Seven Deadly Sins of the Petty Bourgeoisie, Brecht's supremely ironic ballet libretto, is the story of two sisters who in seven years traverse seven cities. In each, one sister is tempted by one of the seven deadly sins. First performed in Paris and London in 1933, with music by Weill and choreography by George Balanchine, it premiered in the United States in 1958 in a production by Balanchine. Of the translations by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman that are reprinted here, Hannah Arendt wrote in 1960 that she knew of "no other adequate rendering of Brecht into English". Arcade's definitive edition also contains an introduction by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, the editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English, together with extensive notes and variants.

Im Buch

Inhalt

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF THE PETTY
67
Text by Brecht
87
Editorial Notes
100
Urheberrecht

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Autoren-Profil (1996)

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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