Die Dreigroschenoper
BERTOLT BRECHT / KURT WEILL Die Dreigroschenoper
A Play with Music: Prologue and Eight Scenes
Based on John Gay's The Beggar's Opera, translated from the English by Elisabeth Hauptmann
Connecting text passages for a concert version of the new Kurt Weill Edition (2000) assembled by Stephen Hinton
Concert performance
End of concert approx. 21:25.
Print programme (PDF)
HK Gruber, Conductor
Markus Obereder, Chorus Master
Max Raabe, Macheath
HK Gruber, Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum
Hanna Schwarz, Mrs. Peachum
Ute Gfrerer, Polly Peachum
Hannes Hellmann, Tiger Brown
Winnie Böwe, Lucy Brown
Sona MacDonald, Spelunkenjenny
Members of the Ensemble Modern, Gangsters
Sven-Eric Bechtolf, Speaker
Salzburger Bachchor
Ensemble Modern
Frankfurt-based Ensemble Modern and composer/conductor HK Gruber perform Kurt Weill’s Die Dreigroschenoper in concert. The collaboration unites the world’s leading contemporary music ensemble with today’s foremost Weill conductor. It is a rare opportunity to hear a virtuoso ensemble and a stellar cast recreating the score from the original band parts as annotated by the Lewis Ruth Band, whose seven members played 23 instruments at the 1928 Berlin premiere. Max Raabe, Echo Award winner for his disc Charming Weill with HK Gruber, will sing Macheath.
Reviewing the much-acclaimed 1999 recording of this performance, Kultur-Spiegel wrote that ‘HK Gruber and the Ensemble Modern set new standards. The musicians from Frankfurt make Kurt Weill’s ingenious work sound shrill and ironic.’ Since 2000, HK Gruber has presented this iconic production throughout Germany as well as in Amsterdam, London, Paris, and Rome, ‘obsessed with details and in love with the piece’, as the magazine Opernwelt remarked.