RISE AND FALL OF THE CITY OF MAHAGONNY

It is an allegory about life today. The principle character is the city. It comes to life starting from man’s needs and mans needs are responsible for its grandeur and its decadence.

Kurt Weill: Remarks regarding my opera Mahagonny, 1930

Fight, drink, fuck: everything is allowed in Mahagonny. Everybody can purchase his part of happiness in this artificial paradise founded right in the middle of the desert by three crooks on the run. But beware of liberal minded thinkers who would like to shatter this illusion… With Mahagonny, Brecht paints a vitriolic picture of a capitalist world built on crime and debauchery, whereas Weill opens the opera with the glistening sounds of jazz and cabaret songs. A resolutely iconoclastic work of which the political and social significance remains contemporary is particularly fitting for the stage director Ivo van Hove for his first highly awaited collaboration with the conductor Esa-Pekka Salonen.

• NEW YORK TIMES

  Ivo van Hove's new staging of "Mahagonny" [...] is quite simply, enjoyable. [...] Much of the joy of this "Mahagonny" comes from witnessing two masters at work: Mr. van Hove, whose concept is both true to his style and in tune with Brecht's intentions, and Esa-Pekka Salonen, whose conducting of Weill's score may be the finest I've heard, especially as played by the reliably impressive Philharmonia Orchestra. 

• EL PAIS

  From the very first scene, the Belgian director proves that he understands this work. [...] With very few elements, Ivo van Hove shapes a storyline that is continuously transforming, and places each of the independent scenes in its ouwn context. 

• TOUTE LA CULTURE.COM

  [Ivo van Hove’s] version of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera is timeless and compelling.