L'Opéra de quat'sous (titre original en allemand est Die Dreigroschenoper / en anglais: The Threepenny Opera) est un musical allemand de Bertolt Brecht et Kurt Weill, créé le 31 août 1928 au Theater am Schiffbauerdamm de Berlin. Elle est inspirée de la pièce du dramaturge anglais John Gay, The Beggar's Opera (1728).
Acte I
Dans son "vestiaire à mendiants", Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum reçoit la visite du jeune Charles Filch, un mendiant que ses hommes ont rossé la veille au motif qu’il officiait sans l’accord de la société Peachum. Filch est engagé par Peachum, qui lui explique son métier. Arrive Célia, l'épouse de Peachum: celui-ci s’inquiète car sa fille Polly, amoureuse, pourrait échapper à l'emprise paternelle. Il comprend que le prétendant de Polly n'est autre que Mackie le Surineur. Et s'inquiète : Polly n’est toujours pas rentrée à la maison.
Dans une écurie, mariage de Polly et Mackie, en présence de la bande de Mackie. Cadeaux, chansons. Arrive le shérif Brown, ami de Macheath; celui-ci le présente à ses hommes.
Chez Peachum. Polly avise ses parents qu’elle est l’épouse de Macheath. Peachum se désole de la perte de revenus qu’entraîne ce départ. Arrivent cinq mendiants qui se plaignent, – Peachum en renvoie deux. Dispute entre Polly et ses parents: ceux-ci annoncent qu’ils vont dénoncer Macheath au shérif, Tiger Brown.
Acte II
Polly apprend à son mari que Brown et Peachum ont décidé de l’arrêter. Macheath doit partir. Il met Polly au courant de ses affaires, l'informe de la liquidation prochaine de sa société et de ses associés. Arrivée de la bande: ils acceptent Polly comme chef. Départ de Macheath: séparation lyrique, il promet de ne pas tromper son épouse. De son côté, Jenny des Lupanars accepte, pour 10 shillings promis par Madame Peachum, de dénoncer Macheath.
Arrivée impromptue de Macheath au bordel de Jenny. Première arrestation de Macheath (par Jenny et le shérif Brown).
En prison: Brown se désespère de devoir faire souffrir son ami. Mackie tâche de corrompre son gardien. Lucy, fille de Brown, vient apprendre à Mackie qu’elle est enceinte (de lui). Arrivée de Polly: les deux femmes se disputent. Macheath prend le parti de Lucy et chasse Polly. Puis il s’échappe; Brown se réjouit de sa fuite. Arrive Peachum qui menace le shérif, et finit par le contraindre à partir à la recherche de Mackie.
Acte III
Chez Peachum: Peachum prépare une manifestation des mendiants pendant le couronnement de la reine. Arrivent les putains de Jenny, qui viennent réclamer leur dû pour la dénonciation de Macheath. Peachum refuse de les payer, puisque Macheath s’est enfui. Dans la conversation, Jenny indique le lieu où se trouve à présent Mackie. Brown arrive, décidé à arrêter Peachum et les mendiants. Mais Peachum parvient à intimider le commissaire, qui se résout, cette fois encore, à partir à la recherche de Macheath.
Dans la chambre de Lucy, à la prison d'Old Bailey. Réconciliation avec Polly. La grossesse de Lucy était simulée. Macheath est repris.
Vendredi, 5 heures du matin, à la prison. L’exécution doit avoir lieu avant 6 heures. S'il veut échapper à la pendaison, Macheath a besoin d’argent. Visite de deux de ses hommes, Mathias et Jacob, qui partent chercher la somme nécessaire. Visite de Polly, de Brown. L’exécution est imminente. Mais soudain, Peachum annonce au public un autre dénouement : arrivée à cheval du héraut du roi (qui n'est autre que Brown). Macheath sera relâché et anobli, à l’occasion des fêtes du couronnement.
Prologue
A street singer entertains the crowd with the illustrated murder ballad or Bänkelsang, titled "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" (Ballad of Mack the Knife). As the song concludes, a well-dressed man leaves the crowd and crosses the stage. This is Macheath, alias "Mack the Knife".
Acte I
The story begins in the shop of Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, the boss of London's beggars, who outfits and trains the beggars in return for a slice of their takings from begging. In the first scene, the extent of Peachum's iniquity is immediately exposed. Filch, a new beggar, is obliged to bribe his way into the profession and agree to pay over to Peachum 50 percent of whatever he made; the previous day he had been severely beaten up for begging within the area of jurisdiction of Peachum's protection racket. This acts as a depiction of capitalist exploitation, in a world where even beggars, individuals at the most exposed and lowest class, are constrained to pay protection.
After finishing with the new man, Peachum becomes aware that his grown daughter Polly did not return home the previous night. Peachum, who sees his daughter as his own private property, concludes that she has become involved with Macheath. This does not suit Peachum at all, and he becomes determined to thwart this relationship and destroy Macheath.
The scene shifts to an empty stable where Macheath himself is preparing to marry Polly once his gang has stolen and brought all the necessary food and furnishings. No vows are exchanged, but Polly is satisfied, and everyone sits down to a banquet. Since none of the gang members can provide fitting entertainment, Polly gets up and sings "Seeräuberjenny", a revenge fantasy in which she is a scullery maid turning pirate queen to order the execution of her bosses and customers. The gang becomes nervous when the Chief of Police, Tiger Brown, arrives, but it's all part of the act; Brown had served with Mack in England's colonial wars and had intervened on numerous occasions to prevent the arrest of Macheath over the years. The old friends duet in the "Kanonen-Song" (Cannon Song" or "Army Song). In the next scene, Polly returns home and defiantly announces that she has married Macheath by singing the "Barbarasong" (Barbara Song). She stands fast against her parents' anger, but she inadvertently reveals Brown's connections to Macheath which they subsequently use to their advantage.
Acte II
Polly warns Macheath that her father will try to have him arrested. He is finally convinced that Peachum has enough influence to do it and makes arrangements to leave London, explaining the details of his bandit "business" to Polly so she can manage it in his absence. Before he leaves town, he stops at his favorite brothel, where he sees his ex-lover, Jenny. They sing the "Zuhälterballade" (Pimp's Ballad) about their days together, but Macheath doesn't know Mrs Peachum has bribed Jenny to turn him in. Despite Brown's apologies, there's nothing he can do, and Macheath is dragged away to jail. After he sings the "Ballade vom angenehmen Leben" (Ballad of the Pleasant Life), another girlfriend, Lucy (Brown's daughter) and Polly show up at the same time, setting the stage for a nasty argument that builds to the "Eifersuchtsduett" (Jealousy Duet). After Polly leaves, Lucy engineers Macheath's escape. When Mr Peachum finds out, he confronts Brown and threatens him, telling him that he will unleash all of his beggars during Queen Victoria's coronation parade, ruining the ceremony and costing Brown his job.
Acte III
Jenny comes to the Peachums' shop to demand her money for the betrayal of Macheath, which Mrs Peachum refuses to pay. Jenny reveals that Macheath is at Suky Tawdry's house. When Brown arrives, determined to arrest Peachum and the beggars, he is horrified to learn that the beggars are already in position and only Mr Peachum can stop them. To placate Peachum, Brown's only option is to arrest Macheath and have him executed. In the next scene, Macheath is back in jail and desperately trying to raise a sufficient bribe to get out again, even as the gallows are being assembled. Soon it becomes clear that neither Polly nor the gang members can, or are willing to, raise any money, and Macheath prepares to die. He laments his fate and poses the questions: "What's picking a lock compared to buying shares? What's breaking into a bank compared to founding one? What's murdering a man compared to employing one?" Macheath asks everyone for forgiveness (Grave Inscription). Then a sudden and intentionally comical reversal: Peachum announces that in this opera mercy will prevail over justice and that a messenger on horseback will arrive (Walk to Gallows); Brown arrives as that messeneger and announces that Macheath has been pardoned by the queen and granted a title, a castle and a pension. The cast then sings the Finale, which ends with a plea that wrongdoing not be punished too harshly as life is harsh enough.
The work is not actively political as many of Brecht's later works are, though he tried to make it so in subsequent rewritings. It was meant as provocative entertainment for middle-class theatergoers – part satire, part shock effects, part aesthetic innovation, part moral indictment, and part sheer theatrical diversion. ... Wilson carefully removed all these aspects of the piece, turning Brecht and Weill's middle-class wake-up call into dead entertainment for rich people. His gelid staging and pallid, quasi-abstract recollections of Expressionist-era design suggested that the writers might have been trying to perpetrate an artsified remake of Kander and Ebb's Cabaret. ... The music was trashily handled, and, in general, rottenly sung ... [although the] actors seemed capable and knowing, snatching eagerly at the brief moments of life allowed them. Too few such moments came to save the evening from Wilson's embalming fluid; much of the middle class, sensibly, fled at intermission.
1 Dreigroschenoper (Die) (L'Opéra de quat'sous) peut-être considéré comme un Top musical
The Threepenny Opera was first performed at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin in 1928. Despite an initially poor reception, it became a great success, playing 400 times in the next two years. The performance was a springboard for one of the best known interpreters of Brecht and Weill's work, Lotte Lenya, who was married to Weill.
In the United Kingdom, it took some time for the first fully staged performance to be given (9 February 1956, under Berthold Goldschmidt). There was a concert version in 1933, and there was a semi-staged performance on 28 July 1938. In between, on 8 February 1935 Edward Clark conducted the first British broadcast of the work. It received scathing reviews from Ernest Newman and other critics. But the most savage criticism came from Weill himself, who described it privately as "... the worst performance imaginable ... the whole thing was completely misunderstood". But his criticisms seem to have been for the concept of the piece as a Germanised version of The Beggar's Opera, rather than for Clark's conducting of it, of which Weill made no mention.
The Threepenny Opera has been translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times. A French version produced by Gaston Baty and written by Nicole Steinhof and André Mauprey was presented in October of 1930 at the Théâtre Montparnasse. It was rendered as L'Opéra de quat'sous; (quatre sous, or four pennies being the idiomatically equivalent French expression for Threepenny and, by implication, cut-price, cheap). Georg Wilhelm Pabst produced a German film version in 1931 called Die 3-Groschen-Oper, and the French version of his film was again rendered as L'Opéra de quat'sous.
It has been translated into English several times. One was published by Marc Blitzstein in the 1950s and first staged under Leonard Bernstein's baton at Brandeis University in 1952. It was later used on Broadway. Other translations include the standard critical edition by Ralph Manheim and John Willett (1976), one by noted Irish playwright and translator Frank McGuinness (1992), and another by Jeremy Sams for a production at London's Donmar Warehouse in 1994.
Broadway
At least six Broadway and Off-Broadway productions have been mounted in New York.
• The first, adapted into English by Gifford Cochran and Jerrold Krimsky and staged by Francesco Von Mendelssohn, featured Robert Chisholm as Macheath. It opened on Broadway at the Empire Theatre, on April 13, 1933, and closed after 12 performances. The brevity of the run has been attributed to the stylistic gap between the Weill-Brecht work and the typical Broadway musical during a busy and vintage period in Broadway history.
• In 1956, Lotte Lenya won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny in Blitzstein's somewhat softened version of The Threepenny Opera, which played Off-Broadway at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village for a total of 2,707 performances. Blitzstein had translated the work into English; Lenya, Weill's wife since the 1920s, had sung both Jenny and Polly earlier in Germany. The production showed that musicals could be profitable Off-Broadway in a small-scale, small orchestra format. This production is also notable for having Edward Asner (as Mr Peachum), Charlotte Rae as Mrs Peachum, Bea Arthur (as Lucy), Jerry Orbach (as PC Smith, the Street Singer and Mack), John Astin (as Readymoney Matt/Matt of the Mint) and Jerry Stiller (as Crookfinger Jake) as members of the cast during its run.
• A nine-month run in 1976 had a new translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett for the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center, with Raúl Juliá as Macheath, Blair Brown as Lucy, and Ellen Greene as Jenny. The cast album from this production was re-issued in compact disc in 2009.
• A 1989 Broadway production, billed as 3 Penny Opera, translated by Michael Feingold starred Sting as Macheath. Its cast also featured Georgia Brown as Mrs Peachum, Maureen McGovern as Polly, Kim Criswell as Lucy, KT Sullivan as Suky Tawdry and Ethyl Eichelberger as the Street Singer. Sting famously grew a thin moustache for the role, and when it closed after 65 performances he shaved it off onstage with a straight razor.
• Liberally adapted by playwright Wallace Shawn, the work was brought back to Broadway[11] by the Roundabout Theatre Company in March 2006 with Alan Cumming playing Macheath, Nellie McKay as Polly, Cyndi Lauper as Jenny, Jim Dale as Mr Peachum, Ana Gasteyer as Mrs Peachum, Carlos Leon as Filch, Adam Alexi-Malle as Jacob and Brian Charles Rooney as a male Lucy. Included in the cast were drag performers. The director was Scott Elliott, the choreographer Aszure Barton, and, while not adored by the critics, the production was nominated for the "Best Musical Revival" Tony award. Jim Dale was also Tony-nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The run ended on June 25, 2006.
• The Brooklyn Academy of Music presented a production directed by Robert Wilson and featuring the Berliner Ensemble for only a few performances in October 2011. The play was presented in German with English supertitles using the 1976 translation by John Willett. The cast included Stefan Kurt as Macheath, Stefanie Stappenbeck as Polly and Angela Winkler as Jenny. The Village Voice gave the production a savage review, writing:
West End (London)
• Empire Theatre, 13 April 1933.
• Royal Court Theatre, 9 February 1956.
• Prince of Wales Theatre and Piccadilly Theatre, 1972
• Donmar Warehouse, 1994. With a new lyric translation by Jeremy Sams. This version was recorded onto CD with Tom Hollander as Macheath and Sharon Small as Jenny.
Prologue
• Ouverture
• Die Moritat von Mackie Messer ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife" – Ausrufer – Street singer)
Acte I
• Morgenchoral des Peachum (Peachum's Morning Choral – Peachum, Mrs Peachum)
• Anstatt dass-Song (Instead of Song – Peachum, Mrs Peachum)
• Hochzeits-Lied (Wedding Song – Four Gangsters)
• Seeräuberjenny (Pirate Jenny – Polly)[N 1]
• Kanonen-Song (Cannon Song – Macheath, Brown)
• Liebeslied (Love Song – Polly, Macheath)
• Barbarasong (Barbara Song – Polly)[N 2]
• I. Dreigroschenfinale (First Threepenny Finale – Polly, Peachum, Mrs Peachum)
Acte II
• Melodram (Melodrama – Macheath)
• Polly's Lied (Polly's Song – Polly)
• Ballade von der sexuellen Hörigkeit (Ballad of Sexual Dependency – Mrs Peachum)
• Zuhälterballade (Pimp's Ballad or Tango Ballad – Jenny, Macheath)
• Ballade vom angenehmen Leben (Ballad of the Pleasant Life – Macheath)
• Eifersuchtsduett (Jealousy Duet – Lucy, Polly)
• Arie der Lucy (Aria of Lucy – Lucy)
• Dreigroschenfinale (Second Threepenny Finale – Macheath, Mrs Peachum, Chorus)
Acte III
• Lied von der Unzulänglichkeit menschlichen Strebens (Song of the Insufficiency of Human Struggling – Peachum)
• Reminiszenz (Reminiscence)
• Salomonsong (Solomon Song – Jenny)
• Ruf aus der Gruft (Call from the Grave – Macheath)
• Grabschrift (Grave Inscription – Macheath)
• Gang zum Galgen (Walk to Gallows – Peachum)
• Dreigroschenfinale (Third Threepenny Finale – Brown, Mrs Peachum, Peachum, Macheath, Polly, Chorus)
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