Subject: The Beggar's Opera - Wikipedia To: Nathaniel Meyer Date: November 8, 2023 I've just finished listening with much interest to Kurt Weill's Dreigroschenoper. Although not congenial to me I found inherently "classical" both the text and the music. It is a parody of a 1728 English opera with text by John Gay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beggar%27s_Opera My interpretation of Weill's 1928 version, is that it is with respect to both music and text well within the tradition of post-Renaissance opera. My tentative surmise is that for the Trustees of the Kurt Weill Music Foundation - as for Biden and Trump - music is essentially a political phenomenon. I note with interest that Hofmannsthal's Jedermann is similarly a parody of an old English play "Everyman" with the same perspective of leveling the distinction between the poor man and the rich man. The play was conceived by Hugo von Hofmannsthal in the tradition of medieval morality plays, based on Elckerlijc (ca. 1470) by Peter van Diest, the late 15th-century English Everyman, Hecastus (1539) by Macropedius, and Hekastus (1549) by Hans Sachs.[1] It was first performed on 1 December 1911 in Berlin under the direction of Max Reinhardt at the Circus Schumann (which later became the Großes Schauspielhaus).