- Audra Mcdonald, Patti LuPone and Anthony Dean Griffey Star in Weill/Brecht Classic, Conducted by James Conlon - Under the leadership of Placido Domingo, LA Opera's production of composer Kurt Weill and librettist Bertold Brecht's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," conducted by Music Director James Conlon, stars Broadway powerhouses Audra McDonald and Patti LuPone and American tenor Anthony Dean Griffey. GREAT PERFORMANCES "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny From LA Opera" airs Monday, December 17, 2007, 9:00-11:30 p.m. ET on PBS. Emmy Award-winner John Doyle (Company) directs. Following the success of The Threepenny Opera, Weill and Brecht collaborated on Mahagonny, expanding a one-act "song play" they'd written earlier into a complete opera of raucous music hall ditties laced with jazz, folk songs and marching melodies.
"McDonald is stunning," proclaimed The Los Angeles Times. "She sings with tremendous power. She knows what the words mean." Tenor Anthony Dean Griffey, who plays Jimmy, the lover of McDonald's character, Jenny, was also praised by The Los Angeles Times: "Friendly, pudgy and stentorian, he is the perfect Jimmy. He falls for Jenny and he falls hard on his luck with a touching innocence." Opera Now wrote, "James Conlon showed the right Weill-ish stuff, deftly mixing street smarts and Modernist elegance in the performance."
LuPone drew special praise from The New York Times for her portrayal of the tough-as-nails Leocadia Begbick, the opera's gang boss. "Patti LuPone makes a jaded and bluntly direct Begbick and handles the high tessitura of the role with surprising agility."
First performed in Leipzig, Germany, in 1930, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny), a thinly disguised satire of Berlin in the 1920s, was set by Weill and Brecht in an America known to them only from books and gangster movies. In the fictional town of Mahagonny, three ex-convicts, led by the Widow Begbick (LuPone), are stranded while fleeing the law. They create a new society where all illicit pleasures are possible as long as you can pay for them -- ethics and morality are of no concern. Soon the trio is joined by others, including the prostitute Jenny Smith (Audra McDonald), who in short time becomes the object of adoration of her lover/client, the simple lumberjack Jimmy McIntyre (Griffey).
All is fine until Jimmy, the hero and proto-anarchist, is put on trial for not paying his whiskey bill. Even a formidable economic crash and a devastating hurricane cannot destroy this capital of vice and corruption, as luridly envisioned by Brecht.
Director Doyle, while keeping Act I in its original period milieu, adds to the opera's continuing pertinence by updating the concluding acts to a Rat Pack-reminiscent 1950s Las Vegas (Act II) and a super-tech Anytown, USA, contemporary setting for Act III.
The original work premiered in Leipzig to decidedly mixed reviews, although all seemed to like the "Alabama Song," which became one of Germany's leading song hits of 1930 (and became a hit 37 years later for the Doors). The LA Opera premiere took place February 10, with telecast tapings March 1 and 4.
Also featured in the large cast, singing Michael Feingold's English translation, are baritone Donnie Ray Albert as Begbick's enforcer, Trinity Moses; tenor Robert Worle as Fatty the Bookkeeper; baritone Mel Ulrich as Bank Account Bill; bass Steven Humes as Alaska Wolf Joe; and tenor John Easterlin as Jack O'Brien. The sets are by Mark Bailey, with costumes by Ann Hould-Ward, stage lighting by Thomas C. Hase and sound design by Dan Moses Schreier.
GREAT PERFORMANCES favorite Audra McDonald debuted on the series in 1995's "Some Enchanted Evenings: Celebrating Oscar Hammerstein II" and last appeared in "The Los Angeles Philharmonic Inaugurates Walt Disney Concert Hall" in 2003. Patti LuPone delighted viewers as the Old Lady in 2005's "Leonard Bernstein's Candide in Concert," while Anthony Dean Griffey broke hearts as Mitch in 1998's "A Streetcar Named Desire From the San Francisco Opera." Music Director Conlon appeared on GREAT PERFORMANCES in 2005 conducting the National Opera of Paris in Stravinsky's "The Nightingale" with soprano Natalie Dessay.
Director Doyle's Emmy Award-winning production of Company, starring Raul Esparza, will premiere on GREAT PERFORMANCES later this season (check local listings). In just over two decades of existence, LA Opera has become, under the leadership of Eli and Edythe Broad General Director Placido Domingo and Music Director James Conlon, the nation's fourth-largest opera company and a renowned producer of works from the classical and contemporary repertoires. The 2007/2008 season includes nine productions, with a special concert performance of Verdi's Requiem and a recital by Welsh bass-baritone Bryn Terfel rounding out a remarkable season at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.
Underwriters: Public Television Viewers and PBS.
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