Rise and Fall of the City of Mohagony - McDonald & LuPone

[COOOOLkid]

Posted: 7/31/06 at 5:31pm

I'm thinking about seeing this opera at Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, however, with the fact that I live an hour away and the ticket prices are so high, I'm still questioning about it. I'd LOVE to see Patti LuPone and Audra McDonald, especially with John Doyle directing this production, but I don't want to be disappointed.

Has anyone seen this opera? If so, how do you like it?

[gustof777]

Posted: 7/31/06 at 5:35pm

Patti and Audra and John...you will not be dissapointed. It's impossible. But see if there is a recording out or something.

[Tirso de Molina]

Posted: 7/31/06 at 6:04pm

COOOOLKID --

Mahagonny is a very dark Brechtian allegory, about criminals founding a city in which nothing is forbidden as long as you can pay for it. MacDonald will be playing Jenny, the whore *without* a heart of gold, who loves the tenor lumberjack Jimmy Mahoney until he runs out of money and can't pay his debts -- and then she allows him to executed rather than part with any of her own money to save him ("You made your bed, you must lie there," she sings when he begs her to help him). LuPone will be playing the Widow Begbick, one of the three criminal founders of the city of Mahagonny, and pretty much the embodiment of human greed and corruption. The piece is unrelentingly savage in its condemnation of capitalism and of human nature (seen as self-serving and corrupt) in general, but the music has a really haunting beauty at times (such as Jimmy's aria before dawn on the day he's to be executed). At the risk of greatly oversimplifying Weill's score, the 1930's musical style --jagged, brassy, sometimes plaintive -- is what Kander and Ebb deliberately imitate in some of the songs in CABARET.

The classic recording is the original with Kurt Weill's wife, Lotte Lenya, singing Jenny.

I'm travelling to see this production myself; it looks very promising, and performances of Mahagonny are rarer than hens' teeth, especially with this kind of cast.

[COOOOLkid]

Posted: 7/31/06 at 10:44pm

Thanks!

Does anyone know how hard it usually is to get rush tickets for LA Opera?

[nobodyhome]

Posted: 8/1/06 at 9:03am

Not to be too nitpicky, but Kander has basically said that he really tried to avoid imitating Weill in Cabaret. He listened to a collection of German jazz and cabaret music of the '20s to get the feeling of the period but avoided Weill. So while there may be Weill influence on the Cabaret music, it was not deliberate.

The old Lenya recording of Mahagonny is preferable to its only competition, the recording on Capriccio, but one major difference between what's on the Lenya recording and what will be probably be heard in Los Angeles is the major vocal adjustments made in the role of Jenny to accomodate Lenya's move from a light soprano to a baritone.

I'm pretty sure that McDonald will be singing it as originally scored.

There is a DVD of a slightly odd but OK Salzburg Festival production of the opera with Catherine Malfitano (looking like she's about to play Morticia in an Addams Family opera) as Jenny, a somewhat miscast Jerry Hadley as Jimmy, and a glamorous looking but vocally wobbly Gwneth Jones as Begbick.