{"id":366914,"date":"2026-10-07T15:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-07T15:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/366914\/"},"modified":"2026-10-07T15:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-07T15:32:07","slug":"brecht-and-weills-happy-end-will-receive-nyc-concert-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/366914\/","title":{"rendered":"Brecht and Weill’s Happy End Will Receive NYC Concert Performance"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new English concert version of Berthold Brecht, Kurt Weill<\/a>, and Elisabeth Hauptmann’s Happy End<\/a> will receive a one-night-only performance November 12 at the Kaufman Music Center’s Merkin Hall. The production, a collaboration between the Glimmerglass Festival, Opera Saratoga, Finger Lakes Opera, and Seagle Festival, has toured throughout New York State and Western Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

Mary Birnbaum<\/a> directs the concert, which features a new English book by Glimmerglass dramaturg Kelly Rourke. The cast includes Kurt Weill Foundation Lotte Lenya Competition winner Ana Karne\u017ea as The Fly, alongside Christone Taylor Price as Lieutenant Lilian Holiday, Gregory Feldmann as Bill Cracker, Lisa Marie Rogali as the Major, Jonathan Pierce Rhodes as the Governor, Bradley Bickhardt as Hannibal, Jason Zacher as Benny, William Raskin as Jimmy, and Lauren Torey as Maryjane. Rob Ainsley, artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival, serves as music director, leading an ensemble of musicians from the Manhattan School of Music.<\/p>\n

Said Birnbaum: “This production has been an extraordinary example of what is possible when organizations choose collaboration over isolation. Happy End is a piece about unlikely alliances, competing ideals, and people trying to find their way through a complicated world. There is something especially fitting about four opera companies coming together to tell that story\u2014and then bringing it to New York City.”<\/p>\n

Happy End was the third stage collaboration between playwright Berthold Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, following Mahagonny-Songspiel in 1927, and Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) in 1928. Hauptmann, who contributed lyrics to Mahagonny-Songspiel\u2014including the famous “Alabama Song”\u2014returned to pen the book for Happy End, which is set in Chicago and follows Salvation Army Leitenant Lilian Holiday as she attempts to reform Bill Cracker, a member of a criminal gang led by a mysterious leader known as The Fly. Premiering September 2, 1929, the piece initially received poor reviews and closed quickly, with different accounts stating that it lasted anywhere from two to 30 days. Despite its relative commercial failure, a number of songs from the show became popular, including “Bilbao Song” and “Surabaya Johnny.”<\/p>\n

Happy End had its Broadway premiere in 1977, directed by Robert Kalfin<\/a> and Patricia Birch<\/a> in an English adaptation by Michael Feingold<\/a>. The Broadway cast included Meryl Streep<\/a> and Christopher Lloyd<\/a>, and was nominated for three Tony awards, including Best Musical, Best Book, and Best Score.<\/p>\n

For more information, visit KaufmanMusicCenter.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new English concert version of Berthold Brecht, Kurt Weill, and Elisabeth Hauptmann’s Happy End will receive a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366915,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-366914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366914"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366914\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}