Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny

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Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny

Opera new production

Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny

Kurt Weill

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Kurt Weill's jazzy opera tells the story of a trap town where pleasure counts as the only law. What seems like paradise swiftly turns into hell.

Socially relevant musical theatre for one's own time – this was Kurt Weill's aim when he composed Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny. Out of the blue, three criminals on the run establish a new city, Mahagonny, a 'trap of a city' that thoroughly exploits humanity's vices and lust for pleasure, accumulating a fortune in the process. Gradually this paradise of consumption turns into a hell in which pleasure and lust form the only moral law and where everything is permitted as long as you pay. For Ivo van Hove, director of a new production of Mahagonny, the jazzy opera by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht is more urgently relevant than ever. In a clean visual style, which focuses on the unclear boundary between the real and the virtual, he traces a link between the social crisis of the late 1920s and today. Van Hove: "We live in a time when divisions have never been so great. We are witnessing a new class struggle."

ca. 3h incl. interval

Free introduction (in Dutch) 1 hour prior to the performance

with Dutch and English surtitles


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Reactions

  • "Een beklijvend verhaal, in een al even beklijvende enscenering met uitstekende muziek."

    De Standaard

  • "Naast ons in de zaal zat een koppel dat voor het eerst een operaticket had gekocht. 'We vinden het geweldig, heel toegankelijk. Maar misschien kennen we er te weinig van,' zeiden ze enigszins bedeesd. Ze kennen er genoeg van."

    De Tijd

  • "De mix van real en fake, van vervreemding en subjectiviteit, zorgt voor heel wat opzwepende of ontroerende momenten."

    De Morgen

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