I am not sure how Brecht would take the idea of being used in a fundraising campaign for an opera company, but here it goes. Taking the line “Nothing would run in Mahagonny without money” out of context, the Komische Oper invites its patrons to become “Friends of the Arts”, that is donate money to keep Mahagonny running.
Otherwise an excellent production – the singing was superb. I was sad to see the opera half empty: I got a seat in the second row an hour before the performance.
The Komische Oper is an odd entity: once the populist lowbrow opera of East Berlin, where Brandenburger farmers would arrive in busloads, it lost its main source of support after unification. (Berlin now has the expensive privilege of hosting three world class opera companies, two from the East and one from the West). It essentially reinvented itself as Berlin’s elite queer establishment: on good days the lobby of the Komische Oper can look a bit like the Eagle!
