Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny at Nationaltheater Mannheim

"Show us the way to the next whiskey bar" is one of the more unusual aria texts of opera history. Because of Weill and Brecht the opera was a "weapons of dialectics". In their attempt to analyze human happiness search under the conditions of high capitalism, the beams are breaking at the opera house: make songs on Bach parodies, airs on marches, film music to dance numbers. Rarely has been experimenting with such gusto in the genre. And of course, the first performance in Leipzig in 1930 a scandal. But the story of six loggers who want to spend their savings on alcohol, gambling and little girl in Mahagonny, quickly found their audience. They recognized themselves in the portrait of a society that wants to live by the law of absolute "You must," and thereby fails.

For director Mark Dietz Mahagonny is a work that must be read accurately to maintain a balance between show and tragedy. Nowhere is the contradictory figure Brecht closer than in confronting the anti-moralism of this opera.