Die Dreigroschenoper,
Kurt Weill and
Bertolt Brecht's radical reinterpretation of John Gay's 18th century operetta The Beggar's Opera, was a sensation in Europe after its German premiere in 1928. But the show, with its decadent portrait of the underworld, was less appealing to Americans when it appeared as The Threepenny Opera on Broadway in 1933 and became a quick flop. It took another 21 years and a new English adaptation by
Marc Blitzstein for The Threepenny Opera to succeed in New York. Playing at a small Greenwich Village theater, the new version ran 2,611 performances (longer than any Broadway musical up to that time), meanwhile establishing off-Broadway as a legitimate extension of the theater. The cast album, the first such recording ever made of an off-Broadway show, suggests what it was that packed them in downtown. The music is played by an eight-piece band -- keyboards, two clarinets, two trumpets, trombone, percussion, and banjo or guitar -- making for spare arrangements that support the heavily literate songs in which
Brecht comments sardonically on the world. The cast is led by a strong Polly Peachum, sung by soprano
Jo Sullivan, and by
Lotte Lenya (
Weill's widow) in the role of Jenny Towler, here given the revenge fantasy "Pirate Jenny." Gerald Price confidently handles "The Ballad of Mack the Knife," soon to become a surprising pop hit. ~ William Ruhlmann