Melbourne Opera: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny

Presented by IOpera and Melbourne Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a satirical opera which premiered in Germany in 1930. A modern-day parable and an attack on excess, the eclectic score also draws inspiration from operetta and the jazz-infused popular music of the roaring ‘20’s. Regularly performed in the great opera houses of the world (including recent revivals at Covent Garden and The Met) its criticism of corruption in a world with increasingly shaky moral foundations, and at war with nature, makes it more relevant than ever. This is the first Australian production in over forty years.

Composed by Kurt Weill with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht and Elisabeth Hauptmann – the same team who wrote ‘The Threepenny Opera’ (‘Mack the knife’), it features the famous the ‘Alabama Song’ (“Show me the way to the next whisky bar”) and is performed in a new English translation by Jeremy Sams.

Starring award-winning artists – Antoinette Halloran, James Egglestone, Liane Keegan, Christopher Hillier, Robert Macfarlane, Christopher Tonkin, Fraser Findlay, Darcy Carroll, and Alastair Cooper-Golec, plus a stellar female ensemble, forty-piece orchestra, and the Melbourne Opera chorus, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is directed by Suzanne Chaundy and conducted by Peter Tregear.