User:Mscuthbert/262 2007/Weill
Themes[edit]
Satire of Opera
To an extent, Mahagonny is an opera that satirizes operas. Brecht said that “[i]t attacks the society that needs operas of such a sort” and Weill said that it “pays conscious tribute to the irrationality of the operatic form”[1]. Both thought operas had become too full of ritual and bereft of substance, and Mahagonny in part sought to deflate the pompous arrogance of traditional opera. With this aim, many traditional operatic themes are subverted and made grotesque; love becomes a commodity, the deus ex machina tells everyone to go to hell, the law is run by criminals, etc. A traditional opera theme is true love, but in Mahagonny the closest such thing is the love between Jimmy and the prostitute Jenny. Furthermore, when given the choice to pay off Jimmy's debt and save his life, she tearfully regrets that while she loves him and will miss him dearly, she cannot part with her money. This commodification of love is brought to a grotesque apex after the hurricane spares Mahagonny; the residents now feel free to do what they want, and naturally they want to love. Consequently, in Act 2 scene 3, the largely male population take turns having sex with the prostitutes. In contrast to the supposed theme of love, the scene portrays a perverse form of love; the prostitutes are carted around like giant slabs of meat and the “love” is regimented by the queue of men each waiting impatiently for their own turn. The Mandalay Song also heightens the ongoing tension. At no point is the music entirely tonal, and while the tune is seemingly jazzy and carefree, the tonalities betray an uneasiness about the whole business. In Mahagonny, operatic love is mutated from a grand aspiration to a mere commodity.
Another trope of operas is the deus ex machina, in which the protagonist is saved at the last minute by divine intervention. This is a useful technique to quickly wrap up a story and make a happy ending, and has been used in drama many times. In Mahagonny, though there are no supernatural occurrences for most of the opera, there is in fact a deus ex machina; God himself comes to Mahagonny right before Jimmy is executed. The typical opera would have God solving all the problems just in time for the end of the opera, but Mahagonny's god does not. He does not even acknowledge that Jimmy is tied up and ready to be killed, but at least tries to fix the moral problems in Mahagonny. He tries to convince them to give up their degraded way of life, but the residents all refuse the offer. God then tells them literally to go to hell, but the people are not even offended; they proclaim that they already are in hell so that is no punishment. After fixing nothing, God then lets Jimmy have his say. Jimmy realizes that money did not buy him happiness or freedom, and he has learned his lesson. However, God does not spare him even then, and Jimmy is executed off-stage.
Mahagonny as Capitalism
Mahagonny as a city was also intended to be a parable of capitalism stripped of its veneer of bourgeois respectability, as it “arose to meet the needs and desires of the people, and it was these same needs and desires that brought about its destruction”[2]. Ultimately, this was also intended as a commentary on the state of Weimar Germany; underneath that facade of prosperity and happiness, lay corruption and saavagery. Under Brecht's (and to some extent Weill's) Marxist-influenced view of capitalism, it is created to provide people the goods and services they need, but it does so at the expense of reducing everything into a mere commodity. Furthermore, since obtaining wealth in capitalism is a cutthroat enterprise, the powerful are no better than a gang of bandits, and the law in turn is in turn run by such thugs.
The city of Mahagonny embodies many of these characteristics. Mahagonny was originally created to provide people with useful services; the gold prospectors wanted a relaxation spot, and the three criminals needed to stay there. However, this led to the commodification of everything the tourists desired, especially love. In the end, nobody could buy true happiness; Alaska Wolf Joe and Jacob Schmidt died, the city is burning down, and Jimmy declared before his death that “[t]he happiness I bought was no happiness”. His deaths was also ordered by the court of law, which was run by the three criminals. To make matters even more farcical, they let a murderer bribe his way to freedom while Jimmy is sentenced to death for petty crimes. The parallels between the events of Mahagonny and the Marxist view of capitalism is clear.
To make the comparison more obvious, the opera is set in a pseudo-Wild West America, with Mahagonny itself placed somewhere far from the rest of civilization. America was the land of unbridled capitalism, the frontier just as much so. The only difference is that bourgeois civility and civilization has yet to occupy the frontier, and thus there is no hiding the nature of capitalism beneath the facade of gentlemanly conduct. In Mahagonny, the characters are prostitutes, lumberjacks, criminals, and the like. Not one of them come from the moneyed class, and yet the same system of exploitation was set up, but in a more naked manner. Instead of seducing a woman's love with power and influence, the residents of Mahagonny pay for a prostitute. But in Mahagonny, poverty is not just a condition the poor bring upon themselves, but a crime to be punished. Thus, Brecht and Weill tried to display capitalism as the meatgrinder they believed it to be.
Musical and Dramatic Elements[edit]
Gebrauchsmusik
Though Kurt Weill was not a vocal proponent of the Gebrauchsmusik movement in Germany, many of his works, including the music for Mahagonny, share many of its characteristics. Loosely defined, Gebrauchsmusik is the idea that music can be more than just pure music. For example, music that accompanies a silent film is perfectly respectable, so long as it is done well. Also, simple music to be performed by amateurs is also acceptable. Weill's musical setting of Mahagonny exemplifies many of these characteristics. In the first place, this is music composed for the stage and not for the concert hall, and Weill intentionally chose that so. He wished to make his music speak out to as many people as possible, so throughout his career his mostly wrote music for the stage, and all the while in Europe he was considered a real composer and not just some hack pandering to the playwright to make a living.
For example, in Act 1, scene 2, the scenario is that Jenny and other girls are walking to Mahagonny. The music is surprisingly simple; just a simple solo with a short chorus and sparse orchestration. The music is not some baroque contrapuntal scheme, nor is it a Romantic forest of sound; rather, the music is very easy to listen to. This music setting matches with the idea of making music accessible to the public, and not just for educated artists. The music style also displays influences from popular music. During this time, American jazz was a sensation in Europe; since opera is set in America, it is not surprising that the tune and the beat have a jazz influence. The orchestration, also includes such non-classical instruments as a saxophone, a decidedly jazz instrument. By using a jazz style in the music, Weill immediately associates the action as happening in America. In addition to making an relatively exotic sound, Weill manages to incorporate the jazz style in the song without making it seem incongruous; the American and European music are seamlessly joined under Weill's hands.
Elsewhere Weill uses other such non-classical instruments as the accordion, and he uses other popular influences, including those of his native Germany. The most enduring feature of Gebrauchsmusik in Mahagonny, however, are the tunes. This reflects Weill's greatest desire to create simple music that would go straight to the heart of the audience. Many of the songs in Mahagonny are very simple and accessible. The Alabama Song, for example, can be picked up absentmindedly and hummed. And while it seems carefree, something seems wrong with it, despite or perhaps because of its simplicity.
Verfremdungseffekt
Since Mahagonny was co-produced by Brecht, there is a prominent display of the Verfremdungseffekt, often translated as the “alienation effect”. Brecht and Weill wished to replace the old dramatic theater and its emphasis on emotions with epic theater and its emphasis on reason. In the case of Brecht, it was more as a didactic tool for communist propaganda, but for Weill, it was more of a social scheme, a way to get people involved and thinking. The general scheme was to shake up people's preconceived notions and make them think about what is happening on stage, or to emotionally distance the audience from the action thus making logical evaluation of the play's events easier. Brecht and Weill different methods to achieve this effect.
One of the most noticeable methods Brecht uses are the inscriptions at the beginning of most of the scenes. Before the majority of the scenes, there is a short summary of that scene recited to the audience. By being already aware of what will happen, the audience can then better concentrate on what is going on in the scene. Oftentimes, Brecht will also have seemingly bizarre events occur, seemingly just to keep the audience unable to guess what will happen next. For example, Jimmy is going crazy at having nothing to do, when all of a sudden a hurricane starts heading towards Mahagonny. The audience is forced to give up concentrating on how Jimmy feels and think about what the meaning of this sudden hurricane is.
Weill also contributed greatly to the Verfremdungseffekt by his music. Oftentimes the music would intentionally be unsuited for the onstage action, preventing the audience from getting carried away by the onstage emotion. For example, in Act 2, scene 13, the hurricane has spared Mahagonny, and the people feel free to do whatever makes them happy. For Jacob Schmidt, this means eating a lot. He sings of how he has not had his fill yet which such lines as “Not enough by half! / I may eat myself for supper.”. And yet, the music betrays the seeming unbridled ecstasy of Jacob; he is singing to a discordant melody, and the accordion accompaniment sounds stark and rather macabre. The intention is that the audience realizes that all this is very wrong; Jacob claims to be having a great time, but the music suggests all may not be well, thus the audience needs to pay attention and think about what is really going on. The further this point, Jacob then dies and the chorus sings of how happy he was while dragging out his corpse. This last twist of welcoming death is unexpected and contributes to the alienation.
Another example of Verfremdungseffekt in the music is in the Alabama Song. This time, instead of the music sounding deeply disturbing compared to the stage action, it is the reverse. When the Alabama Song first appears, the women are going to Mahagonny. The second time the song appears is near the end of the opera, after Jimmy has been executed. Mahagonny is in decline, and there are street protests. The entire stage is singing about how rotten the world and man are, when all of a sudden Jenny and the prostitutes come walking through signing the Alabama Song, a total departure from the previous mood. What is more, they are carrying Jimmy's corpse through the stage. The music refuses to set and keep the audience in a particular mood, and the conflict between the lighthearted Alabama Song and the imagery of the funeral procession is confusing. This tension serves to distance the audience from the action, even at an exceptionally powerful moment of the opera, giving the audience one last chance to digest all the contradictions and perversions of Mahagonny.