32 | thethreepennyoperaproductionnote
Oscar Wilde once said, “Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.” The Threepenny Opera does much the same: the opera uses metaphoric masks—a satirical narrative by Bertolt Brecht and “pleasant” music by Kurt Weill—and literal masks worn and created by The Atlanta Opera to expose stark truths about the realities of money, sex, power, law enforcement, business, and government. The narrative of The Threepenny Opera is drawn from multiple works. Taking inspiration from John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera and poems by Francois Villon and Rudyard Kipling, Brecht worked with Elisabeth Hauptmann to craft the libretto. Efforts for the opera began in early 1928, and it premiered on August 31 of that year. Despite its rushed composition and last-minute revisions, cuts, and changes, the work was one of the most successful productions of the Weimar Republic and quickly traveled to other countries around the world. The immediate and continued success of the opera comes from its satirical nature. An audience member at the premiere observed that those watching the show were “forced to confront on stage their own traits,” but, “They were not repelled […] They liked it […] The people cheered themselves, they saw
