About the Writers

Bertolt Brecht (Book, Lyrics) (1898-1956) was born in Augsburg, Germany. He grew to maturity as a playwright in the frenetic years of the twenties and early thirties, with the plays Man Equals Man, The Threepenny Opera, Mahogonny, and The Mother. He left Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933, eventually reaching the United States in 1941, where he remained until 1947. It was during this period of exile that the masterpieces Life of Galileo, Mother Courage, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and Puntila were written. Shortly after his return to Europe in 1947 with his wife, Helene Weigel, he founded the Berliner Ensemble, becoming its executive director, and from then until his death, Brecht was mainly occupied in producing and directing his own plays there.

Marc Blitzstein (Adapter) (1905-64) was born in Philadelphia and appeared as a pianist with the Philadelphia Orchestra at the age of 15. He later studied with the influential French teacher Nadia Boulanger and the Austrian-born composer Arnold Schoenberg. His works include the opera Regina (1949), based on Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, The Cradle Will Rock (1937) and No For An Answer (1941) and an English adaption of the German poet Bertholt Brecht’s book and lyrics for The Threepenny Opera, by the German-American composer Kurt Weill.

Kurt Weill (Music) (1900–1950) wrote some of the most important works of opera and musical theatre of the first half of the 20th century. His first opera, Der Protagonist, was performed in Dresden in 1926; this was followed by several more avant-garde works, including Royal Palace (1927) and Der Zar lässt sich photographieren (1928). In 1927 he first collaborated with Brecht on the Songspiel Mahagonny, which met with such success that they extended the piece into the full opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1930). Brecht and Weill also worked together on Die Dreigroschenoper (1928), a contemporary adaptation of John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera of 1728. Brecht’s striking scenarios and texts and Weill’s richly varied scores ensured that their partnership was one of the most celebrated in operatic history. Though they fell out in 1930, they collaborated on a number of other works, including Der Jasager (1930) and Die sieben Todsünden (1933). Weill left Germany following the rise of the Third Reich and settled in the US in 1935, where he worked as a Broadway composer. Lady in the Dark (1940) and One Touch of Venus (1943) were both great successes, although an English-language Threepenny Opera was even more successful on its premiere in 1954, with his widow Lotte Lenya leading the cast as she had in the German premiere in 1928.