Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (2015)

Music

A major work from the remarkable partnership of playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, Mahagonny was first performed in Leipzig in 1930. Its first ever Royal Opera staging, by Associate Director of Opera John Fulljames, is sung in English, and conducted by Mark Wigglesworth – recently announced as the successor to Edward Gardner as Music Director of English National Opera. Mahagonny is a satire on money, morality and pleasure-seeking among the dubious citizens of a fictional city. The richly varied, jazz-infused score, influenced by ragtime music, includes such irresistible melodies as the ‘Alabama Song’ and many dramatic ensembles. The superb cast includes Kurt Streit as the wild lumberjack Jimmy, Christine Rice as his sweetheart Jenny, Anne Sofie von Otter in a welcome return to The Royal Opera as the cunning Leokadja Begbick, and Peter Hoare and Willard W. White as her helpers and fellow-fugitives Fatty and Moses.

Director: John Fulljames

Casts

	Anne Sofie von Otter as Leokadja Begbick
	Peter Hoare as Fatty
	Willard White as Trinity Moses
	Christine Rice as Jenny Smith
	Kurt Streit as Jimmy MacIntyre
	Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts as Jack O'Brien
	Darren Jeffrey as Bank Account Billy
	Neal Davies as Alaska Wolf Joe
	Toby Higgins as Hugh Francis

Crew