Metropolitan Opera to Present Free Stream of Brecht and Weill's Mahagonny
(© Metropolitan Opera)
The Metropolitan Opera will present a free stream of its 1979 production of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny on Saturday, December 12 at 7:30pm ET. The musical-theater piece will be available until 6:30pm ET on Sunday, December 13.
Directed by John Dexter and conducted by James Levine, the production was filmed November 27, 1979, with a cast led by sopranos Teresa Stratas and Astrid Varnay as Jenny and Leocadia Begbick, with tenor Richard Cassilly as Jimmy Mahoney and baritone Cornell MacNeil as Trinity Moses.
With a score by Weill and a libretto by Brecht, Mahagonny is set in a fictional American city where anything goes, and the only crime is to run out of money. Its best known song is "Alabama Song," later covered by the Doors and David Bowie.
