Blurred Identities: The Threepenny Opera between Stage-Play, Musical and Film
Keywords:
Threepenny Opera, Brecht, Film, Weill, Music and LiteratureAbstract
This article focuses on the Threepenny Opera, a work of musical theatre that transcended genre boundaries throughout its performance history. In 1928, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill transformed the original English Beggar’s Opera into their famed stage-play with music, before German director G.W. Pabst adapted the material for the screen in 1931. This article explores the transition from stage to screen and the conflict that resulted between the authors and the film production company; it will interrogate how this dispute reflected the complex relationship between theatre and film, and analyse the extent to which Pabst’s interpretation is significant for the formation of the new genre of the German musical film.
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References
Monographs, journals
Brecht, Bertolt. Gesammelte Werke. Bd. 18 Schriften zur Literatur und Kunst I. Ed. Elisabeth Hauptmann. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1967.
Brecht, Bertolt. Grosse kommentierte Berliner und Frankfurter Ausgabe. Bd. 16 Prosa I. Eds. Werner Hecht, Jan Knopf, Werner Mittenzwei, Klaus-Detlef Mueller. Berlin: Aufbau-Verlag , Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1990.
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Heidt, Todd. “Double Take: Béla Balázs and the Visual Disorientation of G.W.Pabst’s Dreigroschenoper”. Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies, 50.2 (2014): 178-196.
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Silbermann, Marc. ‘17 October 1930: Bertolt Brecht’s Threepenny Opera Lawsuit Identifies Contradiction between Individual Creativity and Collective Production in Cinema’. A New History of German Cinema. Eds. Jennifer M. Kapczynski and Michael D. Richardson. Rochester: Camden House, 2012: 213-218.
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Newspapers, magazines
Berliner Börsen-Courier 20 Feb. 1931 Nr.63. Web.
Berliner Börsen-Kurier 6 May 1929. In Hinton: 11.
“Brechts ‘3 Groschen-Oper’ – Klage vor der Weigert-Kammer.” Film-Kurier 8 Oct. 1930 Nr.247, 3. Beilatt. Repr. in Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin.
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DVD
Pabst, Georg Wilhelm. 3-Groschen-Oper, Tonbild-Syndikat, Warner Brothers, 1931.
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