Call from the Grave

The Threepenny Opera
Original German poster from Berlin, 1928
Music	Kurt Weill
Lyrics	Bertolt Brecht
Book	Elisabeth Hauptmann Bertolt Brecht K. L. Ammer () (four songs translated from François Villon)
Basis	John Gay's The Beggar's Opera
Premiere	31 August 1928: Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin

The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a "play with music" by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann, adapted from John Gay's 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera, with music by Kurt Weill and insertion ballads by François Villon and Rudyard Kipling. Although Hauptmann produced 80 to 90 percent of the text, Brecht suppressed this and assumed sole credit, and is usually listed as sole author in printed versions.

The work offers a Socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

Songs from The Threepenny Opera have been widely covered and become standards, most notably "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" ("The Ballad of Mack the Knife") and "Seeräuberjenny" ("Pirate Jenny").

In the winter of 1927/28, Elizabeth Hauptmann, Brecht's lover at the time, received a copy of Gay's play from friends in England and, fascinated by the female characters and its critique of the condition of the London poor, began translating into German. Brecht at first took little interest in her project, but in April 1928 he attempted to interest the impresario Ernst Josef Aufricht () in a play he was writing called Fleischhacker (which he had, in fact, already promised to another producer). Aufricht was seeking a production to launch his new theatre company at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin, but was not impressed by the sound of Fleischhacker. Brecht immediately proposed a translation of The Beggar's Opera instead, claiming that he himself had been translating it. He delivered Hauptmann's translation to Aufricht, who immediately signed a contract for it.