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Look out, musical theatre lovers, The Threepenny Opera will be in town Feb. 9-10.
Opera at USC and the Southern Exposure New Music Series have collaborated for the first time to present the production, which features the song Mack the Knife, made famous by Bobby Darin's swinging cover version, which topped the charts for nine weeks in 1959.
"The Threepenny Opera is a landmark work of the 20th-century musical theater that is contemporary and timely. It seemed like a logical collaboration between Southern Exposure and Opera at USC," said John Fitz Rogers, an associate professor in the School of Music and founder and director of Southern Exposure. "Opera, by nature, is multidisciplinary, and one of the goals of Southern Exposure is to engage the community with programs that are innovative."
"And it's not just a collaboration between Southern Exposure and Opera at USC. It's the whole music and sound program that's emerging here in the School of Music," said Ellen Schlaefer, director of Opera at USC.
The Threepenny Opera, by composer Kurt Weill and dramatist Bertolt Brecht, was considered experimental when he premiered in Berlin in 1928. The original production featured slide projections of text. In keeping with that tradition and to make more space for the audience in the School of Music's Recital Hall, the orchestra for Opera at USC and Southern Exposure's production will perform in another room. But theatergoers should expect no distortion in sound.
Jeff Francis, the School of Music's audio engineer and a former senior recording engineer at Sony Classical Records, coordinated the complex audiovisual design for the production, which features three projection screens and intricate splicing of the orchestra's music and the actors' voices in surround sound through multiple speakers. The screens, which also act as the set, will project pictures and images of the orchestra performing.
"Jeff, who also directs the School of Music's recording program, is a complete genius with technology and a sensitive musician in his own right," Rogers said. "This separation between the orchestra and the actors and singers also is intended to maintain the aesthetic of alienation originally created by Brecht and Weill."
"We are being very true, as we interpret it, to the creators' vision," Schlaefer said.
Based on John Gay's 1728 Beggar's Opera, Brecht and Weill's adaptation is considered one of the first musical-theatre pieces to feature the working class rather than the aristocracy. The plot involves betrayal and corruption and has come to represent Weill and Brecht's native Germany at the height of the Weimar culture in the 1920s.
The work, complete with rioting beggars and cheating lovers, brought the dark side of human nature to the opera stage. Set in London during the coronation of Queen Victoria, the story follows Macheath, a notorious bandit, murderer, and womanizer, and his relationship with Polly Peachum, whose father controls the city's beggars.
"It's about the cruelest way people treat each other," Schlaefer said. "It's not your typical musical. It shows us the basest of human instincts, but it's also funny."
The cast includes a mix of undergraduate and graduate students, professors, alumni, and performers from the community. Associate professor of voice Walter Cuttino, who lived and worked in Germany, and assistant professor of voice Helen Tintes-Schuermann, who lived and worked in Austria, play the roles of Macheath and Mrs. Peachum. Krista Wilhelmsen, a graduate student, plays Polly Peachum, and School of Music alumnus Greg Jebaily performs the role of Mr. Peachum. Jeanette Fontaine, a doctoral candidate in music, will perform the role of Macheath's treacherous ex-girlfriend, Jenny Diver. The remaining cast members include School of Music students and a Columbia College alumna. Aaron Pelzig is the lighting designer.
"This is an opportunity for our students to do a very pivotal work but to do a little more dialogue and to explore two periods of history--Republic in Germany," Schlaefer said. "All of this is new to them, including the approach to the piece and how they sing and relate to one another. And it's a great help for them to work with professionals while they're training.
"We are here to give our students the opportunity to explore. The outcome is what they learn and gain from it. We want our audience to enjoy it; but these are students, and it's a learning process for them."
The performance is free, but seating is limited. Theatergoers should arrive early. The line forms to the right now that Macheath's back in town.
2/08
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Associate professor of voice Walter Cuttino, left, plays the role of Macheath, and Jeanette Fontaine, a doctoral candidate in music, performs the role of Jenny Diver. 
