The Threepenny Opera

The Threepenny Opera is a 1928 German musical by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, a satirical work about criminals in Victorian London.

It adapts John Gay's 1728 *The Beggar's Opera* and features the antihero Macheath (Mack the Knife).

The piece critiques capitalism and bourgeois morality through deliberate theatrical artifice.

Its songs, particularly "Mack the Knife," became standards beyond the theater world.