Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s “Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny” is a work of relentless cynicism, where three runaway convicts build a Sin City that peaks then crashes. The opera also charts the gradual souring of a philosophy through liberal ideals, to the libertarian pursuit of freedom at all cost, to an authoritarian crackdown on pleasure through rules-based order, concluding with a descent into capital punishment and public discontent. It’s a sour, strangely balanced opera, rarely mounted in the UK though popular elsewhere in Europe.
On Monday night, a production directed by Jamie Manton opened at English National Opera, an organization it’s almost become clichéd to talk about as cash-strapped. Their “Mahagonny” was as lean as it could get: Rehearsal periods were shortened dramatically, and budgets for sets slimmed. With all the caveats, it was impressive to pull off something this ambitious given such limited means.
Also on Monday night, the best-laid plans of music critics searching for a quiet drink and a non-judgemental space to record a video BarTálk collided with the city of London’s early closing times and attentive table service. So, in a downstairs of a noodle place in Chinatown, we discussed the right room temperature for proper Brechtian alienation, how energy dissipates in the massive expanse of the Coliseum, the pox of phones in operas, and, surprisingly, the adult content creator Bonnie Blue.
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