“The Threepenny Opera” by Kurt Weill / Bertolt Brecht in a polemic with tradition: between theater and opera

Section 1. World music: retrospections and modernity

Abstract

Statement of the problem. The 20th century has become a field of heated debates with an established tradition. The close connection between music, dramaturgy, and theatricality in opera allowed it to be used to declare one’s own positions in the art. The past century did not refuse to directly address compositions that have entered the annals of history. A kind of “retelling” of the well-known would become a means of exacerbating issues that touched upon various aspects of socio-cultural life. One of such examples is “Die Dreigroschenoper” (“The Threepenny Opera”) by K. Weill / B. Brecht. Recognized as the most popular in the legacy of artists, it still remains out of the attention of Ukrainian musicologists. Objectives, methods, and novelty of the research. The artistic position of K. Weill gives rise a need to further solutions to problems relevant to musicjology. These include the belonging of “Die Dreigroschenoper” to the musical genre and its relationship to the opera tradition. The outlined issues, considered on the basis of historici approach with the involvement of various methods of analysis, determine the purpose and novelty of the article. Research results. For “Die Dreigroschenoper”, B. Brecht borrowed material from “The Beggar’s Opera” (1728) by the English playwright J. Gay with music by J. Pepusch. His choice is not perceived as accidental, just like the date of the production of “Die Dreigroschenoper”(1928). His change of characters and substantive accents contributed to the exposure of the moral and social vices of the society of that time, while actualizing unchanging human values. Just like the original music by K. Weill, in contrast to the arrangement of famous ballad tunes by J. Pepusch, it reveals its belonging to the opera genre. According to Brecht’s concept of epic theatre, the vocal pieces should not have had a direct connection with the heroes. The actors represented their characters or a plot event. However, the behaviour of each of them or the situation in which they find themselves is aimed at perceiving vocal statements precisely as their characteristics or stories about themselves, like the traditional convention of opera. This is reinforced by the presence of such songs for all the main characters. The overture to the composition, despite the unusual composition of the orchestra, retains the main function of exposing contrasting thematism, which generalizes one of the key plot motives: the contradiction between the reign of lawlessness and the living sprouts of human feelings. Therefore, the individual composer’s concept of “Die Dreigroschenoper”, retains the essential features of the genre and appears in the new cultural and historical space as a response to the demands of the time. Conclusions. The study of the legacy of K. Weill will not only replenish the treasury of Ukrainian musicology with information about one of the innovators of the last century, but will also contribute to expanding knowledge about the ways of developing musical art in the context of various artistic and aesthetic trends, understanding the influence of the composer’s creative searches on the further development of many phenomena of musical art and the processes of democratization of opera owing to its appeal to the mass culture.