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Because there's nothing to build any trust upon.''|from the translation by W.H. Auden and Chester Kallmann}}
A satirical, somewhat minimalist anti-Nazi opera by [[
The play tells the story of the city of Mahagonny, founded by Leocadia Begbick, Fatty the Bookkeeper and Trinity Moses, bandits running away from the law. Because gold is "easier to take from men than from rivers", Mahagonny is a place where men coming from working in the gold mines can have peace and pleasure. The first act deals with the arrival of the prostitutes (including Jenny from Oklahoma), and Jimmy Mahoney (Paul in the first drafts, Jimmy McIntyre in the Los Angeles Opera's latest performance) and his friends: men seeking the heart of a heartless world. In the second act, [[It Gets Worse]], and the characters end up having to deal with the consequences of their decadence.
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The concept was meant to parody the "state of freedom" (Heilstaat) that the Nazi party was trying to create when the play was written. In the first act, the characters aim to live a life of uncomplicated luxury within the dictatorship of the three criminal founders (a parody of Hitler's plans for Germany). When this is determined to be too "inhuman" (read: dull), the characters instead decide in the second act to live a life of violence, decadence and greed, taking whatever they can take in life (a commentary on what the Nazi ideology would inevitably become). Predictably, the Nazi party was ''not'' amused, shut down the performance in 1933, and Brecht and Weill fled Germany soon after.
''Mahagonny'' is full of [[Stylistic Suck]], has barely any plot or characterisation to speak of, and draws out the traditional slow parts of opera as agonizingly slowly as possible - on purpose, of course. The main figures are intentionally derivative of [[
The play was ''probably'' inspired by Pilnyak's 1929 novel ''Mahogany'', though Brecht never cared enough about copyright to bother admitting to it.
''Mahagonny'' is referenced throughout [[Lars
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=== ''The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' contains examples of: ===
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* [[Boom Town]]
* [[Bowdlerise]]: The "Love" scene, and the recurring chorus that anticipates it.
* [[Casualty in
* [[Crapsack World]]
* [[Death
* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: Attempted in ''The God of Mahagonny'', [[It Gets Worse]].
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: Mahagonny has been compared to the Weimar Republic and the revolt by Jimmy to do whatever you want as the rise of Nazism.
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* [[Downer Ending]]: Mahagonny gets destroyed by the struggle of different factions and the fail of providing desired commodities to all.
* [[Drunken Song]]: The one Jimmy sings at the saloon to mourn the death of his friends.
* [[Expy]]: Jenny from ''[[
* [[Gratuitous English]]: The Alabama Song and the Benares Song.
* [[Grief Song]]: There's pretty much one at the end of each act respectively for a typhoon, the death of Joe and Jacob and the death of Jimmy and Mahagonny.
* [[Hooker
{{quote| '''Jenny''': "The things people ''expect'' from us girls these days..."}}
* [[Hanging Judge]]: Trinity Moses appears to be a bit over enthusiastic on condemning people
* [[Hope Spot]]: The song ''The God of Mahagonny''.
* [[Intercourse
* [[Kangaroo Court]]
* [[List Song]]: Jimmy sings what he would rather do than be in Mahagonny (eat his own hat, drive to a farm in Georgia) while his friends try to talk him down singing another list song about all the things he could be doing in Mahagonny.
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** Nowadays, how surprising this is depends on the casting. It's not much of a shock that Audra McDonald's Jenny (pictured above) presumably had an Afro-Cuban father.
* [[Screw the Rules, I Have Money]]: Toby Higgins.
* [[Soiled City
* [[Those Two Bad Guys]]: Trinity Moses and Fatty The Bookkeeper.
* [[Wretched Hive]]
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