This Sunday at 8 pm on The Lyric Stage we have musical selections from The Threepenny Opera, whose disreputable characters and social and political satire of Berlin in 1928 were inspired by Elisabeth Hauptman's translation of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera from 1728.
Hauptmann was the sometime lover and longtime friend of Bertolt Brecht, and she presented her translation to Brecht and Kurt Weill as a possible project for the two to collaborate on. She later worked on the script of The Threepenny Opera with Brecht. Hauptmann was not one to blow her own horn, so there is disagreement about the exact amount of her contribution, but at the least it was significant.
In 1928, Lotte Lenya created he role of Jenny in the original Berlin production, and in 1958, she supervised the recording we have, and she sings Jenny on it this time as well.