The Threepenny Opera was Brecht's first and greatest commercial success and it remains one of his best-loved and most-performed plays. Based on John Gay's eighteenth-century Beggar's Opera the play is set in Victorian England's Soho but satirizes the bourgeois society of the Weimar Republic through its wry love story of Polly Peachum and "Mack the Knife" Macheath. With Kurt Weill's music which was one of the earliest and most successful attempts to introduce jazz into the theater it became a popular hit throughout the Western world. Commissioned and authorized by the Brecht estate Arcade's definitive edition contains the acclaimed translation by Ralph Manheim and John Willett that was first staged at the York Theatre Royal and subsequently at Lincoln Center in New York. Willett and Manheim the joint editors of Brecht's complete dramatic work in English also provide Brecht's own notes and discarded songs as well as extensive editorial commentary on the genesis of his play.
