Strehler asked how far The Threepenny Opera was a satire on grand opera, to which Brecht replied: only in so far as grand opera still persists, but that this had never been so important in Germany as in Italy. The starting point must always be a poor theatre trying to do its best.
Strehler asked what did Brecht think about adaptation to bring it up to date. Brecht thought such a procedure acceptable. Strehler’s question sprang from the fact that it would be impossible, for instance, to stage The Threepenny Opera in Naples using Kurt Weill’s music. However, in Milan there were parallels with the reign of Umberto I which would be brought out. To this extent Milan was comparable with London, while the popular note struck by the music would have the same reception as in Berlin. The bourgeoisie was the same. But Strehler wondered if the need to Italianise the names might not eliminate the necessary critical detachment: for ‘one must bare one’s teeth for the truth’.
Brecht wondered if it might not be possible to set The Threepenny Opera in the Italian quarter of New York around 1900 perhaps. The music would be right too. He had not gone into the question as yet but at the moment he thought it a possible transposition. The New York Italians had brought everything, including their emotions, from back home, but it had all got commercialised. There would be a brothel, but one like at home, to which they’d go because they felt it was ‘like being back at mamma’s’.
Strehler took this idea further and asked if it wouldn’t mean adding a prologue. Here again Brecht agreed, in so far as some explanation would be needed. It would have to be established that the New York beggar actors were a group of Italians, that it was all like in Milan but a long way off. The first skyscrapers could have been built, but the group must be wretchedly poor. All they want to do is to stage something ‘like back home’.
Strehler had a suggestion for the prologue. A film of Milan could be shown, leading the actors to want to perform something recalling that city, whereupon the curtain would rise and the play begin.
Another reservation of Strehler’s concerned the Italian actor’s penchant for improvisation. ‘You send someone off to choose a costume and he comes back with fifty.’ There was also the problem of ‘the epic style of portrayal’. According to Strehler it is not easy for the Italian actor to play on more than one level at a time, i.e. roughly to the effect that ‘I am acting a man trying to act this character.’ He asked if it was at all possible to perform Brecht’s plays – e.g. The Mother, which he described as the ‘stronghold of the epic theatre’ – except in an epic manner, and where if anywhere they could be performed if one had no actors or directors who had been trained for them. ‘What is the result of acting them in the wrong way?’ Brecht: ‘They can certainly be performed, but what emerges is normal theatre, and three-quarters of the fun is lost.’
Strehler wanted some advice about what to do with actors who knew nothing about epic theatre. He asked if it was possible to perform a Brecht play given only one actor familiar with the epic theatre, and he inquired about methods for teaching the epic way of acting.
Brecht told Strehler not to worry and that our own acting too was only partly epic. It always worked best in comedies, since they anyway entail a measure of alienation. The epic style of portrayal was more easily achieved there, so that it was a good idea generally to stage plays more or less as comedies. He suggested using an aid which he had tried himself: having the actors intersperse what he called ‘bridge verses’, thus turning their speech into a report in indirect speech; i.e. interspersing the sentences with ‘said he’s. ‘What’s bad is that “epic” cannot be achieved without using the dialectic.’
Strehler said he was convinced that nowadays it was impossible to act either Shakespeare or the earlier tragedies without alienation if their performance was to be useful and entertaining.
Brecht once again suggested acting tragic scenes for their comic effect. What is most epic, he maintained, is always the run-throughs, and they should certainly be scheduled for the end of the rehearsals or better still conducted at regular intervals throughout the whole rehearsal period. ‘The nearer the performance gets to being a run-through, the more epic it will be.’ Strehler asked if his way of explaining epic portrayal to his actors was the right one, when he would cite the example of a director acting a scene, showing the actors in outline how to do something and all the time having his explanations ready even if he never voices them. Brecht approved of this and thought that the actors too could be put in the director’s situation if one instituted run-throughs with minimal use of gesture, so that everyone simply noted how things should go.
Strehler feared that his Threepenny Opera production might turn out ‘neither fish nor fowl’. His sense of responsibility had held him back from doing Mother Courage, since he was unable to find an epic actress to play the title part. This production of The Threepenny Opera too was something that he had been planning for years and always had to put off because of a shortage of suitable actors.
[‘Über eine Neuinszenierung der Dreigroschenoper’, from Bertolt Brechts Dreigroschenbuch (Suhrkamp, Frankfurt 1960) pp. 130-134. Strehler’s production for the Piccolo Teatro, Milan, in 1957 eventually transposed the play to an American setting around the time of the First World War, with the police as Keystone Kops and an early motor car on stage. Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann thought it excellent.
At the Geneva Conference of summer 1954 the Western powers, China and the Soviet Union agreed to create two Vietnams, North and South. John Foster Dulles was then U.S. Secretary of State. King Umberto I’s reign in Italy was from 1878 to 1900.]
Editorial Notes
1. GENERAL
Though there is little in the way of manuscript material or notes to show just how it evolved, The Threepenny Opera was clearly one of Brecht’s more rapidly written works. Its producer Aufricht only took over the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm at the end of 1927, and it must have been in March or April 1928 that he and his dramaturg Heinrich Fischer went to Brecht in search of a play. What Brecht then offered them – apparently as his own work and under the title Gesindel or Scum – was a translation of The Beggar’s Opera which Elisabeth Hauptmann had almost completed; he is said to have shown them the first two scenes. Nothing of this first script has come down to us, and there is no real evidence that Brecht himself had as yet taken any hand in it. The process of ‘adaptation’ credited to him by the original programme probably only started once the play itself and the principle of a collaboration with Weill had been accepted. Erich Engel, with whom Brecht had been working on the Berlin Man equals Man, was already earmarked as the play’s director.
The next event seems to have been the production of a stage script which was duplicated by Brecht’s and Hauptmann’s agents, Felix Bloch Erben, and presumably represented the work done by the collaborators in the south of France that summer. Its title is given as ‘The Beggar’s Opera / Die Luden-Oper [The Ragamuffins’ Opera] / translated by Elisabeth Hauptmann / German adaptation: Bert Brecht. Music: Kurt Weill’. Though its text is still a good way from the final version it already represents a considerable transformation of the original. Several subsequently discarded characters from Gay’s original still remain (notably Mrs Coaxer and her girls), but Lockit has already been purged, together with all that part of the plot involving him, and replaced by the rather more up-to-date figure of Brown. Peachum’s manipulation of the beggars is also new, as are the first stable and second gaol scenes. The main items retained from Gay in this script are, in our present numbering, scenes 1, 3, 4, 5 (which is not yet a brothel but a room in the hotel), 6, 8 and the principle of the artificial happy ending. There are no scene titles. However, Macheath’s final speech before his execution is already there, much as in our version, as are several of the songs: Peachum’s Morning Hymn (whose melody is in fact a survivor from the original, being that of Gay’s opening song), Pirate Jenny, the Cannon Song, the Barbara Song, the Tango-Ballade, the Jealousy Duet, Lucy’s subsequently cut aria (in scene 8), the Call from
the Grave and the Ballad in which Macheath Begs All Men for Forgiveness; also the final chorus. Most of these are not given in full, but only by their titles, and some may not yet have been completed. There are also two of Gay’s original songs, as well as two translations from Kipling: ‘The Ladies’ and ‘Mary, Pity Women’. Neither the Gay nor the Kipling songs were, so far as anybody knows, set by Weill, but the latter may explain why the original programme spoke of ‘interpolated songs … by Rudyard Kipling’.
This script was altered and added to in the course of the rehearsals, when texts of several of the songs were stuck in and the rest added. The piano score, which includes all the present songs apart from the Ballad of Sexual Obsession, was published not long after the premiere, the text in Brecht’s Versuche 3 only in 1931. This 1931 text has remained virtually unaltered, though Brecht appended a certain amount of alternative material later, and is to all intents and purposes that used for our translation.
2. THE 1928 STAGE SCRIPT
ACT ONE
Scene 1
The dramatis personae originally included Gay’s Mrs Coaxer and Suky Tawdry; Jenny was Jenny Diver, as in Gay, which Brecht later rendered ‘Spelunken-Jenny’ or literally ‘Low Den Jenny’, perhaps on the assumption that ‘Diver’ meant a habituée of dives. The script starts the play without any scene title and with the following stage directions:
Mr Peachum’s house. It is 7 am. Peachum is standing at a desk on which lie a ledger and a Bible. Round the walls are notices with such sayings as ‘Give and it shall be given unto you’, ‘Close not thine ear to misery’, ‘You will benefit from the interests of a powerful organisation’ and ‘Ifyou are satisfied tell the others, if you are dissatisfied tell me’.
Peachum sings his Morning Hymn, then:
So. Now, one glance at the Bible and then to work. Matthew 5. I’m always combing Matthew for something I can use. No good. I’ll have to cut it out once and for all. Salt without an egg. Matthew 6: feeble, feeble. No personality there. Wait. Verse 25: Give and it shall be given unto you. Flat, but it’s been used already. Proverbs is still the best, particularly chapter 6. All kinds of useful lessons, if a bit old-fashioned. Yes, a business man like me, Robert Jeremiah Peachum and Co., who’s forced to live among thieves, whores and lawyers, cannot do without God. Or let’s say, without God and accountancy. We must add to that application, seriousness, circumspection, genius and economy. Not to mention early rising and kindness and loyalty …
This leads to Filch’s entrance, after which the dialogue continues much as now up to the production of outfit C (p. 98). There is then no showcase with wax dummies; instead Mrs Peachum ‘drags out a box full of indescribably ragged clothes’. Instead of Peachum’s speech exhibiting the various outfits Filch is simply told to ‘Take off your clothes’ etc. (p. 98), and these then become outfit A, the young man who has seen better days.
Filch removes his socks under protest (p. 99), and then as Mrs Peachum brings in the screen Peachum asks, much as in Gay’s scene 4:
Did that fellow Macheath come round yesterday? The one who’s always coming when I’m out?
MRS PEACHUM: Certainly, Bobby dear. There’s no finer gentleman. If he comes from the Cuttlefish Bar at any reasonable hour we’re going to a little hop with him – the Captain, Polly, Bob the Saw and me. Bobby, my Dear, is the Captain rich?
The dialogue remains close to Gay’s (which we will make identifiable by its use of capital letters for nouns, as in German), down to Mrs Peachum’s statement of her concern about Polly (which comes just before her first song in The Beggar’s Opera). Then Filch appears in his new begging outfit and asks for a few tips (p. 100).
PEACHUM inspects him, then to Mrs Peachum: Half-wit? Yes, that’ll be the best thing. To Filch: Nobody stupid can play the half-wit, you know. Come back this evening …
etc. (which is not in Gay). But after his ‘Fifty per cent!’ Peachum says ‘To come back to Polly …’ and returns to a cross between Gay’s text and ours. Thus:
A handsome Wench in our way of Business is as profitable as at the Bar of a Temple Coffee-House. You should try to influence the girl in the right direction. In any thing but Marriage! After that, my Dear, how shall we be safe? You must imagine we can live on air. The way you chuck your daughter around anyone would think I’m a millionaire. The fellow would have us in his clutches in three shakes. In his clutches! Do you think your daughter can hold her tongue in bed any better than you? Polly is Tinder, and a Spark will at once set her on a Flame. Married! All she can think about is her own Pleasure, not her own Profit. Do you suppose we nurtured her at our breast…?
MRS PEACHUM: Our?
PEACHUM: All right, you nurtured her; but did you nurture her so we should have no crust to eat in our old age? Married! I expect my daughter to be to me as bread to the hungry – He leafs through the book. – it even says so in the Bible somewhere. Anyway marriage is disgusting. I’ll teach her to get married.
MRS PEACHUM: Dear Bobby, you’re just a barbarian. You’re being unfair to her. She is doing exactly what any decent girl would do: a few Liberties for the Captain in the interest of the business.
PEACHUM: But ’tis your Duty, my Dear, as her mother, to explain to the girl what she owes to herself, or to us, which amounts to the same thing. I’ll go to her this moment and sift her.
At this point, corresponding to the end of Gay’s scene 4, Peachum moves on to what became part of his long speech on p. 98, the complaints of client no. 136, then goes out telling Mrs Peachum to get on with ironing in the wax. Left alone, as in Gay’s scene 5, she says:
God, was Bobby worked up! I can’t say I blame him, though; I can’t say I blame him.
Peachum returns, and the final exchanges are as in our text, less the song.
Scene 2
Again there is no title (this applies throughout the stage script), but the stage direction says ‘Empty stable. 5 pm the next day. It is fairly dark. Enter Macheath with Matt of the Mint and Polly.’ There is nothing in Gay corresponding to this scene.
The dialogue starts as in our text, roughly as far as Ned’s ‘Dear Polly’ (p. 104), though without the lines in which Macheath shows his ignorance of Peachum. After Ned says this Mac, having knocked his hat off, ‘shoves him against the wall, pushing his face with the flat of his hand – a favourite manoeuvre’. Thence it continues as now down to Polly’s inquiry ‘Was the whole lot stolen? (p. 104).
MACHEATH: Stolen? Selected! Anybody can steal, and everybody does. But selecting the right items … That’s where art comes in. What incompetence! [etc. as now, p. 105].
Thereafter the dialogue is much as now down to Jimmy’s ‘Hey, Captain, the cops!’ (p. 108), though there is no mention of Jenny Diver by Jake (p. 107). Jimmy’s exclamation this time heralds Brown’s entrance, not that of the Rev. Kimball (who does not appear at all), and it turns out it is Brown’s prospective son-in-law the Duke of Devonshire who is the stable’s owner: ‘Did it have to be Teddy’s stable?’ says Brown. ‘At this of all times?’ Mac welcomes him with ‘Sit down, you old bugger and pitch into the egg mayonnaise’ (cf. p. 113). He observes the origins of the plates and the eggs, then listens to the gang sing ‘Bill Lawgen’ (which is not from the original) and comments on the salmon:
Clark’s, the fishmongers. Breaking and entering reported this morning. Tastes delicious.
This is where Polly performs ‘Pirate Jenny’, which provokes the same reactions as in our text, apart from its references to Rev. Kimball. After ‘let’s not have any more of it’ (p. 112) Mac goes straight on with ‘You have today in your midst …’ (p. 113), the speech leading into the Cannon Song. Only the title of this is given, but its first version had already been written some years earlier and published in the Devotions for the Home under the title ‘Song of the Three Soldiers’; it is sometimes, on no clear grounds, described as ‘after Kipling’.
After the song the text is much as now down to Brown’s ‘There’s nothing whatsoever on record against you at Scot
land Yard’ (p. 115), apart from the interpolation at the end of Macheath’s long speech (p. 114) of ‘Cheers, Brown! And now for some music! – at which ‘Everything is cleared to one side. Three of the guests take it in turns to form a little jazz band.’ This prepares the way for the dance which concludes the scene. During it Macheath stands in the centre and says:
My dear friends. Let us bring this day to a worthy conclusion by conducting ourselves as gentlemen.
WALTER dancing with Polly: Oh, stuff this day.
After which ‘The party continues in full swing. Once again we bear the chorus “Bill Lawgen and Mary Syer”’ – i.e. not the present Love Duet.
Scene 3
This starts close to Gay’s scene 6, with indications of some intimacy between Mrs Peachum and Filch:
Mr Peachum’s office. Morning. Mrs Peachum. Filch.
MRS PEACHUM: Come hither, Filch. I am as fond of this Child, as though my Mind misgave me he were my own. Why are you so sad? Can your mamma not help?
FILCH tonelessly: Oh dear, I can’t regard you as my mamma, Mrs Peachum, even though I shouldn’t say it.
He says how hard it is to beg, and regrets his choice of profession. She wants him to find out about Macheath and Polly, who has now been away from home for three days. Filch knows, but as in Gay has promised not to tell:
MRS PEACHUM: Right, Filch, you shall go with me into my own Room, Filch. You shall tell me the whole Story in comfort, Filchy, and I’ll give thee a Glass of Cordial Médoc that I keep locked up in my bedside table for my own drinking. Exeunt.
Bertolt Brecht: Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder 2 Page 34
