Mahagonny at the Royal Opera
It is rather a strange paradox
- that people unlucky enough to have suffered life's hard knocks
- are often portrayed in entertainment for the upper crust--
- at least those who consider opera-going a must,
- since if life has really been a 'sticky wicket'
- there is neither leisure nor cash enough to buy a ticket.
- But all of this was pondered long ago by The Greeks
- despite their having to sit for hours in open air stadia with leaks.
- However, I'd personally draw the line at Mahagonny
- and prefer something a bit more sunny
- and at least a little more relaxing and escapist....
- than hearing about some horrible rapist,
- since, if crime and murders are what I'd choose...
- on any day, I need only read the news.
- hzl
- 3/16/15
Sticky wicket - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sticky_wicket
WikipediaA sticky wicket, (or sticky dog, or glue pot) is a metaphor used to describe a difficult circumstance. It originated as a term for difficult circumstances in the sport of ...
Poetics (Aristotle) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poetics_(Aristotle)
WikipediaCopy of a lost bronze bust of Aristotle made by Lysippos (4th century BCE) ... The poet must express Thought through the characters' words and actions, while ... Greek tragicdrama included a singing chorus, and so music and language were...
Attending a performance — Royal Opera House
- www.roh.org.uk › Visit
Royal Opera House, LondonTickets for collection for all performances are held at the Box Office in the Bow ...programmes are produced for some productions and these cost slightly more.
.....consumed like just another luxurious treat?
When it comes to Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny we should begin by noting that Brecht was, in the English idiom, a nasty piece of work: a braggart and a bully, a brawler and a bi-curious seducer whose multiple and concurrent couplings shackled his lovers-who-were-collaborators and his collaborators-who-were-lovers together in a creative chain gang that laboured under the lash of his charisma. Brecht was also an ideological carpetbagger who, like so many mid-20th century intellectuals, jumped on and off the Marxian bandwagon, depending on whether it seemed to be going their way.....
By December 1931, when Mahagonny was staged in Berlin, the scandal of Leipzig had been entered into the typology of Weimar’s disintegration; subsequent performances had only gone ahead after cuts to the brothel and trial scenes while Nazi disruption of the production in some other cities had been still more ferocious. Meanwhile, following the crash, Germany’s industrial production had been halved; unemployment was nudging 6 million; the banks were teetering on the edge of collapse and the inexorable goose-step to the right was in motion. Conversely, the UK today may well be in the throes of a long-running economic crisis, but as yet it’s one that spreads stealthily through the body politic; if there’s one thing about which I feel confident – despite the radical contingencies that typify our world – it’s that there will be no rioting or disruption whatsoever at the Royal Opera’s production of Mahagonny.......
the characters condemn themselves out of their own mouths: “We’ve lost our good old mamma / And must have whisky / Oh! You know why.” And we do know why: they must have whisky, and pretty boys and pretty girls; and they must gorge themselves until they die because although God is indeed dead, his revenant still torments them with disordered dreams of paradise.
Brecht, in all his unloveliness, understood full well what it was like to be driven by your passions. Unlike Rousseau, he did not believe that man is born free and everywhere is in chains. Rather, like Freud, he grasped that everywhere man is enchained by his lust for life – and his infatuation with violence and death. In common with Nietzsche, Brecht understood that at the very crux of being itself is a wellspring of unquenchable desire. It’s this vitalism that animates Mahagonnyeven as it animates the bourgeoisie in the stalls. Sit with them imaginatively for a while, feel the oppression of that desire. Ooh! What a lot they want – they want status and money and power and sex; they want comfort and food and unlimited leisure. Yet like the inhabitants of Mahagonny, when they actually experience these things they feel nothing but boredom, and so begin to tear their playhouse down.
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