The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera
Original German poster from Berlin, 1928
Music	Kurt Weill
Lyrics	Bertolt Brecht
Book	Elisabeth Hauptmann Bertolt Brecht
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, adapted from German dramatist Elisabeth Hauptmann's translation of 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. 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").

Brecht was first motivated to prepare a version of The Beggar's Opera by the successful revival of the original by Nigel Playfair in London in 1920. He offered the idea to the impresario Ernst Josef Aufricht () who was seeking a production to launch his new theatre company at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin. The score by Weill uses only one of the melodies which Johann Pepusch wrote for the original Beggar's Opera. The title Die Dreigroschenoper was determined only a week before the opening; it had been previously announced as simply The Beggar's Opera (in English), with the subtitle "Die Luden-Oper" ("The Pimp's Opera").