Brecht’s opera Mahagonny in Los Angeles, USA, and on TV

This video from Los Angeles in the USA is about

Weill’s Rise & Fall of the City of Mahagonny performance featuring Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, Anthony Dean Griffey, John Doyle and the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra and Chorus.

From Art for a Change blog in the USA:

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

The opera, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, is a razor-edged critique of capitalism, and considered by many to be the greatest collaboration between music composer Kurt Weill and playwright Bertolt Brecht. On March 4th, 2007, well over 3,000 people packed the Los Angeles Dorothy Chandler Pavilion to see the seventh and final performance of the L.A. Opera’s English-language production of Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Augsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny). It may come as a big surprise to some people that I’m a fervent opera enthusiast, but I was one of those in attendance, and that very performance was filmed for broadcast by PBS.

Now, millions of Americans will finally be able to see the remarkable opera when PBS Great Performances broadcasts it nationally. Its televised premiere begins on Monday, Dec. 17, 2007, when it’s shown on New York’s WNET-TV, at 9:00 p.m., and again on Friday, December 21, at 12:30 a.m.

Brecht also wrote The Good Soul of Szechuan.

Brecht’s theatre play Arturo Ui: here. And here.

The Caucasian Chalk Circle by Brecht: here.

Christa Wolf or Freedom at the Risk of Being Misunderstood: here.

Related articles

• BetteBack April 6, 1987: Bette Midler To Star In “Lenya”

• Kurt Weill: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) (aposplendourseries.wordpress.com)
• Swans, Starlings, and the Cessation of Time: A Mediation on Some Passages in Brecht (crosspollenblog.wordpress.com)
• Patti LuPone to Guest on Season 3 of HBO’s GIRLS (broadwayworld.com)
• Bertolt Brecht and Epic Theatre (aposplendourseries.wordpress.com)
• Patti LuPone to Launch Concert Tour from Minneapolis in September (broadwayworld.com)
• Audra McDonald: Right Gal for S.F. Symphony’s Gala (sfcv.org)
• Hitler’s crackdown on Jewish composers (dearkitty1.wordpress.com)
• Bertolt Brecht: irresistible force or forgotten chapter in theatrical history? (theguardian.com)
• Go behind the scenes at the L.A. Opera (blogs.kcrw.com)

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