Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny

Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, an opera with 20 scenes by B. Brecht and K. Weill, written 1927-9, published in 1929 and first produced at Leipzig on 9 March 1930. Partly in prose and partly in free verse, it is based on Brecht's earlier Songspiel (sic) Mahagonny (1927) and is, as stated in Versuche, vol. 2, ‘ein Versuch in der epischen Oper: eine Sittenschilderung’. Three rogues (Willy der Prokurist, Dreieinigkeitsmoses, and Frau Leokadja Begbick) found the get-rich-quick city of enjoyment Mahagonny (‘die Goldstadt’). It does not, however, prove a success until the woodcutter Paul Ackermann from Alaska proposes a ban on all prohibitions (‘Vor allem aber achtet scharf/Daß man hier alles dürfen darf’), whereupon prosperity comes to Mahagonny, where money is the only criterion. Paul Ackermann becomes penniless, and, since this is of all crimes the worst, he is executed for failing to pay for whisky he has consumed. The city burns and the inhabitants chant their songs of pleasure and, above all, money. It is right, so we are shown, that Mahagonny should be destroyed, for money brings no freedom. It is also inevitable that the city, which has been spared by the hurricane, is destroyed by the more powerful corruption of human nature among the inhabitants of the city.