COLUMBUS, Ohio — Opera Columbus opens their new season this weekend with an all-new adaptation of the classic "The Threepenny Opera."
"If you love jazz music, if you love Charleston-type dancing, this is the opera for you," said Julia Noulin-Mérat, general director and CEO of Opera Columbus.
"The Threepenny Opera" is done in English and, unlike many other operas, contains quite a bit of spoken text.
"The production is only 100 minutes so it's very short but, if you love musical theatre, this is absolutely the production for you."
The opera follows antihero Mack the Knife as he maneuvers through the Victorian London underworld in pursuit of his love Polly Peachum with the coppers hot on his heals. The opera has just entered the public domain which is how Opera Columbus is able to rework the piece into their own version of the story.
"It's an incredible, hilarious, wacky social satire," said stage director Austin Regan, who also wrote this new version of the tale. "We can honor the things that make it a classic...but [we can also] kind of play around with it and have fun with it; be true to what was there and what was beautiful and great and hilarious about it, while making sure that it also feels really relevant and fun to a modern audience today."
Opera Columbus' "The Threepenny Opera" runs Nov. 22 and the 24 at the Southern Theatre in downtown Columbus. For tickets and showtimes, visit: https://www.operacolumbus.org/threepenny/.