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I find myself going back to this work--to a deep experience of my youth--at a time when the United States is, once again, at war. “Oil, inflation, war, social struggles, the family, religion, wheat, the meat-packing industry, [become] subjects for theatrical portrayal,” writes Brecht. Weill’s brilliantly alienated, hilarious, complex, “insidiously bittersweet” music is one reason. Even more importantly, Brecht’s sense of helplessness, his simultaneous apocalyptic despair and hope, his call to action, his sense of “fun” (a word of considerable importance in his conception of the theater) and most of all his insistence on the multiple contradictory perspectives that constitute reality seem a comfort and an inspiration--and they are so precisely because of their fierce refusal to be either comforting or inspirational.
From a paper on the Brecht/Weill opera, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny
take a piece by
Bach, Beethoven, Handel, Brahms
Keep it intact
but add traditional “Spanish” elements
Have it played
by a mariachi band
Call it a “translation”
(Do it with Wagner
Charles Ives)
Shine,
green
moon of Alabama
light the way!
They’ll give us
money
when they come
to Mandalay
when they come to
Mahagonny
where you may
do anything
Give me
money
says the bar
of Mandalay--(Money
makes Sexy)--
The great, dead Cities
drain us
Ah, this whole
Mahagonny
is only
because everything’s rotten
because there’s no peace
and no harmony
and nothing
on which
you can rely
Look at those birds: lovers
circling
you came from Havana
years ago
I came from Alaska
I, Jimmy--
Seven years in the cold
in the snow-covered woods
I made it
and spent it--
now there’s nothing left of me
we don’t need
hurricanes
we don’t need
typhoons
we can do
whatever they do
better
Ronnie Burk’s
dead
ah, ah
don’t let them fool you
it’s the business
you don’t come back
of the future
day’s in the doorway
to be
but you feel
dangerous
the night wind
.
there’s nothing but life
you stand with the beasts
they’ll use you if you let them
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