The Threepenny Opera
Film19952h 43m
Where to watch
Details
- Director
- Hans Hollmann
- Language
- German
- Released
- 1995-01-01
- Runtime
- 2h 43m
Community score
Confidence
Rating weighted by how many people voted
Actor Hub
Scene work for this title — private technique journals.
Open journal →The story
The Threepenny Opera proclaims itself "an opera for beggars," and it was in fact an attempt both to satirize traditional opera and operetta and to create a new kind of musical theater based on the theories of two young German artists, composer Kurt Weill and poet-playwright Bert Brecht. The show opens with a mock-Baroque overture, a nod to Threepenny's source, The Beggar's Opera, a brilliantly successful parody of Handel's operas written by John Gay in 1728. In a brief prologue following the overture, a shabby figure comes onstage with a barrel organ and launches into a song chronicling the crimes of the notorious bandit and womanizer Macheath, "Mack the Knife." The setting is a fair in Soho (London), just before Queen Victoria's coronation. In this production, Weill champion HK Gruber led the Ensemble Modern in a performance of Weill's complete original score, the first time it had been heard in Germany in many years. This production was broadcast on German television (3sat).
The room
Ask. Discuss. Find the next one.
Stay with The Threepenny Opera: ask what it is actually doing, talk it through, then follow the traits that made it land.
Ask
Talk it through
Grounded in the film — and in your map, when you have one.
Try asking
3 free asks left without an account.
Actor journal
Private scene work lives in Actor Hub — not on this title page.
Characters
Star up to 5 favourites in The Threepenny Opera. Rank them if you want — picks feed Cinematic DNA; journals stay private.
