Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2

by Bertolt Brecht

  About the singing of the songs

  When an actor sings he undergoes a change of function. Nothing is more revolting than when the actor pretends not to notice that he has left the level of plain speech and started to sing. The three levels – plain speech, heightened speech and singing – must always remain distinct, and in no case should heightened speech represent an intensification of plain speech, or singing of heightened speech. In no case therefore should singing take place where words are prevented by excess of feeling. The actor must not only sing but show a man singing. His aim is not so much to bring out the emotional content of his song (has one the right to offer others a dish that one has already eaten oneself?) but to show gestures that are so to speak the habits and usage of the body. To this end he would be best advised not to use the actual words of the text when rehearsing, but common everyday phrases which express the same thing in the crude language of ordinary life. As for the melody, he must not follow it blindly: there is a kind of speaking-against-the-music which can have strong effects, the results of a stubborn, incorruptible sobriety which is independent of music and rhythm. If he drops into the melody it must be an event; the actor can emphasise it by plainly showing the pleasure which the melody gives him. It helps the actor if the musicians are visible during his performance and also if he is allowed to make visible preparation for it (by straightening a chair perhaps or making himself up, etc.). Particularly in the songs it is important that ‘he who is showing should himself be shown’.

  Why does the mounted messenger have to be mounted?

  The Threepenny Opera provides a picture of bourgeois society, not just of ‘elements of the Lumpenproletariat’. This society has in turn produced a bourgeois structure of the world, and thereby a specific view of the world without which it could scarcely hope to survive. There is no avoiding the sudden appearance of the Royal Mounted Messenger if the bourgeoisie is to see its own world depicted. Nor has Mr Peachum any other concern in exploiting society’s bad conscience for gain. Workers in the theatre should reflect just why it is so particularly stupid to deprive the messenger of his mount, as nearly every modernistic director of the play has done. After all, if a judicial murder is to be shown, there is surely no better way of paying due tribute to the theatre’s role in bourgeois society than to have the journalist who establishes the murdered man’s innocence towed into court by a swan. Is it not a piece of self-evident tactlessness if people persuade the audience to laugh at itself by making something comic of the mounted messenger’s sudden appearance? Depriving bourgeois literature of the sudden appearance of some form of mounted messenger would reduce it to a mere depiction of conditions. The mounted messenger guarantees you a truly undisturbed appreciation of even the most intolerable conditions, so it is a sine qua non for a literature whose sine qua non is that it leads nowhere.

  It goes without saying that the third finale must be played with total seriousness and utter dignity.

  [‘Anmerkungen zur “Dreigroschenoper” ’, from GW Schriften zum Theater p. 991 and Stücke p. 992, omitting paragraphs 2 (‘Titles and screens’) and 6 (‘Why does Macheath have to be arrested twice over?’), which refer to Brecht’s theatre as a whole rather than to this particular play. For these see Brecht on Theatre.]

  Stage design for The Threepenny Opera

  In The Threepenny Opera the more different the set’s appearance as between acting and songs, the better its design. For the Berlin production (1928) a great fairground organ was placed at the back of the stage, with steps on which the jazz band was lodged, together with coloured lamps that lit up when the orchestra was playing. Right and left of the organ were two big screens for the projection of Neher’s drawings, framed in red satin. Each time there was a song its title was projected on them in big letters, and lights were lowered from the grid. So as to achieve the right blend of patina and newness, shabbiness and opulence, the curtain was a small, none too clean piece of calico running on metal wires. For the Paris production (1937) opulence and patina took over. There was a real satin drapery with gold fringes, above and to the side of which were suspended big fairground lamps which were lit during the songs. The curtain had two figures of beggars painted on it, more than life size, who pointed to the title ‘The Threepenny Opera’. Screens with further painted figures of beggars were placed downstage right and left.

  Peachum’s beggars’ outfitting shop

  Peachum’s shop must be so equipped that the audience is able to grasp the nature of this curious concern. The Paris production had two shop windows in the background containing dummies in beggars’ outfits. Inside the shop was a stand from which garments and special headgear were suspended, all marked with white labels and numbers. A small low rack contained a few worn-out shoes, numbered like the garments, of a kind only seen in museums under glass. The Kamerny Theatre in Moscow showed Mr Peachum’s clients entering the dressing booths as normal human beings, then leaving them as horrible wrecks.

  [‘Aufbau der “Dreigroschenoper”-Bühne’, from GW Schriften zum Theater p. 1000. Dated c. 1937. Tairoff’s production at the Kamerny Theatre in Moscow took place in 1930. The Paris designer was Eugene Berman.]

  Note by Kurt Weill

  ABOUT The Threepenny Opera (A PUBLIC LETTER)

  Thank you for your letter. I will be glad to say something about the course on which Brecht and I have embarked with this work, and which we mean to pursue further.

  You speak of The Threepenny Opera’s sociological significance. True enough, the success of our play has shown this new genre not merely to have come at the right moment in terms of the artistic situation but also, apparently, to have responded to a positive longing on the public’s part to see a favourite form of theatre revitalised. I doubt whether our form is going to replace operetta […]. What really matters to all of us is the establishment of a first bridgehead in a consumer industry hitherto reserved for a very different category of writer and musician. The Threepenny Opera is putting us in touch with an audience which was previously ignorant of us, or at least would never have believed us capable of interesting a circle of listeners so much wider than the normal concert- and opera-going public.

  Seen thus, The Threepenny Opera takes its place in a movement which today embraces nearly all the younger musicians. The abandonment of ‘art for art’s sake’, the reaction against individualism in art, the ideas for film music, the link with the musical youth movement and, connecting with these, the simplification of musical means of expression – they are all stages along the same road.

  Only opera remains stuck in its ‘splendid isolation’. Its audiences continue to represent a distinct group of people seemingly outside the ordinary theatrical audience. Even today new operas incorporate a dramaturgical approach, a use of language, a choice of themes such as would be quite inconceivable in the modern theatre. And one is always hearing ‘That’s all very well for the theatre but it wouldn’t do in opera.’ Opera originated as an aristocratic branch of art, and everything labelled ‘operatic tradition’ goes to underline its basic social character. Nowadays, however, there is no other artistic form whose attitude is so undisguisedly social, the theatre in particular having switched conclusively to a line that can better be termed socially formative. If the operatic framework cannot stand such a comparison with the theatre of the times [Zeittheater], then that framework had better be broken up.

  Seen in this light, nearly all the worthwhile operatic experiments of recent years emerge as basically destructive in character. The Threepenny Opera made it possible to start rebuilding, since it allowed us to go back to scratch. What we were setting out to create was the earliest form of opera. Every musical work for the stage raises the question: what on earth can music, and particularly singing, be doing in the theatre? In our case the answer was of the most primitive possible kind. I had before me a realistic plot, and this forced me to make the music work against it if I was to prevent it from making a realistic impact. Accordingly the plot was either interrupte
d, making way for music, or else deliberately brought to a point where there was no alternative but to sing. Furthermore it was a play that allowed us for once to take ‘opera’ as subject-matter for an evening in the theatre. At the outset the audience was told ‘Tonight you are going to see an opera for beggars. Because this opera was so opulently conceived as only a beggar’s imagination could make it, it is called The Threepenny Opera.’ And so even the finale to the third Act is in no sense a parody, rather an instance of the very idea of ‘opera’ being used to resolve a conflict, i.e. being given a function in establishing the plot, and consequently having to be presented in its purest and most authentic form.

  This return to a primitive operatic form entailed a drastic simplification of musical language. It meant writing a kind of music that would be singable by actors, in other words by musical amateurs. But if at first this looked like being a handicap, in time it proved immensely enriching. Nothing but the introduction of approachable, catchy tunes made possible The Threepenny Opera’s real achievement: the creation of a new type of musical theatre.

  [‘Über die Dreigroschenoper’ from Kurt Weill: Ausgewählte Schriften, ed. David Drew, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1975, p. 54. Originally published in Anbruch, Vienna, January 1929, Jg. 11, Nr. 1, p. 24, where Weill was responding to a letter from the editors welcoming the success of a work which so accurately reflected contemporary social and artistic conditions, and asking for his theoretical views.]

  Transcript

  From a conversation between Brecht and Giorgio Strehler on 25 October 1955 with regard to the forthcoming Milan production. (Taken down by Hans-Joachim Bunge.)

  Strehler had prepared twenty-seven precisely formulated questions for Brecht about the production of The Threepenny Opera. He began by asking its relation to the original Beggar’s Opera and the extent of Elisabeth Hauptmann’s and Kurt Weill’s collaboration.

  Brecht and Hauptmann told him that a play had been needed to open the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm under Fischer and Aufricht’s direction on 28 August 1928. Brecht was engaged on The Threepenny Opera. It was based on a translation made by Elisabeth Hauptmann. The ensuing work with Weill and Elisabeth Hauptmann was a true collaboration and proceeded step by step. Erich Engel agreed to take over the direction. He had directed Brecht’s early plays and Brecht had attended many of his rehearsals; he was the best man for an experiment like this. Perhaps the hardest thing was choosing the actors. Brecht went primarily for cabaret and revue performers, who had the advantage of being artistically interested and socially aggressive. During the summer Caspar Neher prepared his designs. According to Brecht the idea underlying The Threepenny Opera was: ‘criminals are bourgeois: are bourgeois criminals?’.

  Strehler asked whether there was any material about the first performance. He was convinced that ‘Models’ were useful and therefore needed it for his production. The sort of thing that would be of historical interest to him was to know the style of the production and the historical setting of the first performance. He asked if he was right in assuming that Brecht had shifted The Threepenny Opera to the Victorian era because of the latter’s essentially bourgeois character, which meant that London rather than, say, Paris or Berlin provided the best setting. Brecht replied that from the outset he had wanted, primarily because of the shortage of time, to change the original as little as possible. Transporting it to Paris or some other city would have meant extensive changes in the portrayal of the setting, which in turn would have entailed much additional research. But even the best of principles couldn’t be maintained indefinitely, and working on the play had led to the realisation that the original date could usefully be advanced a hundred years, A good deal was known about the Victorian age, which at the same time was remote enough to be judged with critical detachment, thus permitting the audience to pick out what was relevant to them. Set in that period the play would be more easily transported to Berlin than if set in that in which Gay had (of necessity) had to locate it.

  Strehler observed that the music which Weill wrote in 1928 was of its own time and therefore evidently in deliberate contrast with the period of the play. Brecht said this was a gain for the theatre. The underlying thought was: beggars are poor people. They want to make a grand opera, but lack money and have to make do as best they can. How to show this? By a splendidly entertaining performance (which at the same time, of course, must lay bare the conditions prevailing at that period) and at the same time by making evident all that which failed to achieve the object intended, frequently indeed producing results actually opposed to it. For instance the beggar actors are quite unable to portray respectability (such as ought to be particularly easy in a Victorian setting), so that there are continual lapses, particularly in the songs. The grand manner at which they are aiming goes wrong, and suddenly it all turns into a dirty joke. This isn’t what the beggar actors want, but the audience loves it and applauds, with the result that it all keeps slipping further into the gutter. They are alarmed by this, but all the same it works. Their plan to create a grand theatre proves impossible to realise. Because of their restricted means it only half comes off. (Here again the Victorian age gives the right picture.) In such a beggar’s opera decency would be no inducement to the audience to stay in its seats; its preferences are accordingly respected. Only the finale has once again been carefully rehearsed, so that the level originally aimed at can at least be achieved here. Yet even this is a failure, for it succeeds only as parody. In short there is a perpetual effort to present something grandiose, but each time it is a fiasco. All the same a whole series of truths emerge.

  Brecht gave an instance: unemployed actors trying to portray the Geneva conference. Unfortunately they have a quite wrong idea of it, and so with the best will in the world all their crocodilelike efforts to present Mr Dulles, for instance, as a Christian martyr are a failure, because they have no proper notion either of Mr Dulles or of a Christian martyr. Whatever they do is successful only in making people laugh. But to laugh is to criticise.

  Strehler suggested that The Beggar’s Opera was originally aristocratic in both form and content, a skit on Handel’s operas for instance. Brecht had kept its form and its sense. All this was still valid in 1928. Capitalist society was still on its feet then, as was grand opera. Meantime there had been a war, but the problems had remained in many ways generally the same. Today however there were distinctions that must be made. Its relevance would still apply as forcefully in Italy and similar capitalist countries.

  Brecht agreed. He thought the play ought to have the same power of attack in contemporary Italy as it had had at the time in Berlin.

  Strehler asked how far was The Threepenny Opera an epic play and how epic ought the production to be.

  Brecht emphasised that both considerations to a great extent applied. The socially critical stance must not be abandoned for a moment. The main prop here was the music, which kept on destroying the illusion; the latter, however, had first to be created, since an atmosphere could never be destroyed until it had been built up.

  Strehler expressed regret that so many Threepenny Opera productions had been prettified. Not that its socially critical aspects could be entirely camouflaged, but it had remained a nice theatrical revolution which failed to get across the footlights, not unlike those lions that can be safely visited in zoos, where you are protected from attacks by iron bars. The average director made concessions to his audience, and it wasn’t going to pay 2,000 lire to have filth thrown at it. The way The Threepenny Opera was normally performed, like an elegant Parisian opera, everybody found it ‘nice’.

  Brecht explained that when The Threepenny Opera was originally staged in Germany in 1928 it had a strong political and aesthetic impact. Among its successful results were:

  1. The fact that young proletarians suddenly came to the theatre, in some cases for the first time, and then quite often came back.

  2. The fact that the top stratum of the bourgeoisie was made to laugh at its own absurdity. Having once
laughed at certain attitudes, it would never again be possible for these particular representatives of the bourgeoisie to adopt them.

  The Threepenny Opera can still fulfil the same function in capitalist countries today so long as people understand how to provide entertainment and, at the same time, bite instead of mere cosy absurdity. The important point now being: look, beggars are being fitted out. Every beggar is a monstrosity. The audience must be appalled at its own complicity in such poverty and wretchedness.

  Strehler asked if Brecht could suggest any ways of ensuring that The Threepenny Opera should be as artistically effective and topically relevant in 1955 as in 1928. Brecht replied that he would heighten the crooks’ make-up and render it more unpleasant. The romantic songs must be sung as beautifully as possible, but the falsity of this ‘attempt at a romantic island where everything in the garden is lovely’ needed to be strongly underlined.

  Strehler was anxious to get material about the set, but what his Milan production most needed was some suggestions about costumes, since he felt that the 1928 costumes, which so far as he knew were based wholly on the Victorian era, would no longer be of use to him. Brecht corrected him, saying that far from being Victorian the 1928 costumes had been gathered from the costumiers and were a complete mixture. He would not think of abandoning the use of rhyme as in The Beggar’s Opera, nor, with it, the ‘jazzed up Victorianism’ of the Berlin production. In the Moscow production Tairoff had entirely modernised the costumes so as to conjure up the (by Moscow standards) exotic appeal of Paris fashions.

  Brecht said that Strehler had the right picture: up went the curtain on a brothel, but it was an utterly bourgeois brothel. In the brothel there were whores, but there was no mystique about them, they were utterly bourgeois whores. Everything is done to make things proper and lawful.