Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Kurt Weill’s librettist was none other than revolutionary director and playwright Bertolt Brecht, who purported to believe that his scathing satire on rampant capitalism, subversively presented in the bourgeois form of opera, would cause a riot. He was right, it did. But that was back in 1930, when Nazi sympathisers disrupted performances and the Wall Street Crash was fresh in the memory. While we may not be inspired to overthrow the state by director John Fulljames’s glitzy production, it is highly entertaining. The extremely visual show really comes to life in Act II and a coup de theatre in which Es Devlin’s set design sees a single shipping container unfold into a towering wall of them, all neon lit and functioning as bars and brothels.

Brecht’s storyline sees a trio of criminals on the run found a new city where food, sex, fighting and drinking are the most important aspects of its culture, and the worst crime is to have no money. Meanwhile, Weill’s score may surprise many who think of him as just a decadent cabaret merchant; the wealth and variety of his music seems unrivalled – from toe-tapping songs and jazz work-outs, to romantic opera, antiphonal choruses and even modernist atonality.

Kurt Streit is Jimmy McIntyre, the hard-drinking idealist who falls victim to Mahagonny’s (im)moral code. Mezzo Christine Rice is best as Jenny, a goodtime girl who arrives in the city on the back of a lorry and embraces all the city has to offer. Soprano Anne Sofie von Otter is tad straight as corrupt city guardian Leocadia Begbick; but wonderfully supported by her sidekick wise-guy tenor Peter Hoare and bass Willard White as the muscle overseeing the insalubrious economy. The male chorus is also on great form, memorably in 1960s suits and hats, trousers down and queueing for prostitutes. A booming voice-over from Paterson Joseph links everything together.

Conductor Mark Wigglesworth seems to forget that the jazz idiom of the opera means the singers have the volume turned down, while he has it up full with his band. Consequently, the sassy Weimar Republic sound world sometimes gets lost and singers are drowned out in the soaring orchestral onslaught. But it all adds to the decadent theme. Definitely worth a look.