The Little Mahagonny

The Main Stage of ETHAL presents the theatrical adaptation by Berliner Ensemble of the opera "The Little Mahagonny" by the composer Kurt Weill and the dramatist Bertolt Brecht. (in Greek)

Mahagonny-Songspiel, also known as The Little Mahagonny, is a "small-scale 'scenic cantata'" written by the composer Kurt Weill and the dramatist Bertolt Brecht in 1927. Weill was commissioned in the spring to write one of a series of very short operas for performance that summer, and he chose to use the opportunity to create a 'stylistic exercise' as preparation for a larger-scale project that they had begun to develop together (the two had met for the first time in March), their experimental 'epic opera' The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1930).

The Little Mahagonny was based on five 'Mahagonny Songs', which had been published earlier in the year in Brecht's collection of poetry, Devotions for the Home (Hauspostille), together with tunes by Brecht. To these five was added a new poem, "Poem on a Dead Man", that was to form the finale. Two of the songs were English-language parodies written by Elisabeth Hauptmann: the "Alabama Song" and "Benares Song".

The Little Mahagonny was first produced at the new German chamber music festival at Baden-Baden on the 17th July, 1927.

Years later, The Little Mahagonny was produced, in a much adapted version, by the Berliner Ensemble.