Our high school did a production of “The Threepenny Opera” and 3 of our sons were in it, one of them playing Mack the Knife.
He stepped in 2 weeks before opening, on my recommendation to the director, having not been active in the theater classes at all before then, when the previous actor just decided he didn’t want to do it.
Everyone was amazed but me – sometime parents do know things – and he did a great job. However, since he is also the MOST introverted of our very introverted family, we were all amazed at how well he convinced the audience that he really could “get the girls” — that personality aspect did not transfer into real life!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erlkönig_(Schubert)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaBNUzVSnj8

https://youtu.be/yUMFM0LMFAo

Connie Shih is an excellent accompanist here. They have collaborated on at least two other albums.

Good point. Hadn’t thought of Mack the Knife in yonks. For some weird reason have a bit of amnesia about Threepenny Operas, Isherwoods, Cabarets, and all that. Still trying to figure out why :).

“…This is something that the paleocons never anticipated. They saw the administrative state as a leviathan that served the interests of the managerial elite. The network of people at the top had control of the system. Instead, it seems to have evolved into an organism that has agency of its own. ***The people at the top are not masters of the universe steering the system, but captives hanging on for dear life.***

This is what we see with the Ukraine crisis. The American actions thus far are like programmed moves that were based on an assumed set of facts on the ground that do not exist or have rapidly changed. Anyone pointing this out is attacked as a tool of Putin and anyone trying to work from the facts on the ground is viewed as the enemy. It is not particularly clear right now that anyone is actually in control of American foreign policy.

***What all of this points to is that managerialism has evolved beyond what the paleocons imagined back in the last century. Technology has allowed the system to overtake its masters, integrating them into the whole. The Global American Empire is operating upon rules that the people nominally in charge do not fully understand. Managerialism has become a narcotic that controls the people within it.***

That means the media is just a collection of drones without agency that serve the interest of the managerial collective. Journalism has become just another activity in service to the system. In this light it is not activism in service to its own interests but a defense mechanism. It is one of the parts of the creature we can see from the outside that helps us understand the overall mood of the creature.”

Brecht did have a hit with, “Mackie Messer,” https://youtu.be/uiGFZUnJgqU

but it’s more fitting for the Feast Day of St. Isidore than Christmastime,
https://mafiagenealogy.wordpress.com/2016/05/09/labor-and-the-mafia/

“Ständchen”

Got to Track 3 of the drinking songs and got a surprise with ‘Ich bin der Doktor Eisenbart.’ Heard this before as something else!

Ein Mann, der sich Kolumbus nannt – Singen, Tanzen und Bewegen || Kinderlieder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zw-4fTKzCHM

Wisely this one has comments off so there’s no deluge of woke bile about casting or lyrics.

Der Leiermann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIIS-UgixGE

This one with Quasthoff and Barenboim is magnificent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pze4NxCOjg0

And the Two Creepy Homos Version (Pears, Britten):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHFiRia1ySE

This is one of the best Amazon reviews I’ve ever encountered:

“If I had to make a short list of “Winterreise” performances that I think every serious listener should hear, Pears/Britten would be on it. It seems to cast an entirely different light on the cycle than any other performance I have ever heard. It is sui generis, alien and profoundly “other,” and it works in a bizarre way that I don’t really understand, but which I find very intriguing. From the very beginning, Pears and Britten are in a different place, markedly distant from the “Winterreise” tradition that I have become familiar with. Every “Winterreise” performance (by a male singer)that I find persuasive, be it Hotter, Huesch, Fischer-Dieskau, Schmitt-Walter, or Anders, seems to move from a state of more or less normalcy into varying degrees of darkness and alienation. Pears and Britten, on the other hand, are alien from the first moment you hear them. You can well imagine why Mom and Dad are happy to find a more suitable husband for their little girl– this guy is a geek, a weirdo, an outsider, not someone you could ever feel comfortable with. It’s the quality of the voice, the strangely-flavored German, the little hitches and twitches in the rhythms, the occasional odd emphases. It’s as if this protagonist is from another planet and the text and the music are being filtered through the Universal Translator. It’s recognizable, yes, but everything is just that little bit “off,” so that you are constantly off-balance and on edge. The expected progression away from what is comfortable and accustomed to a state of profound loneliness and alienation doesn’t quite happen. When Pears sings “Fremd bin ich eingezogen, fremd zieh ich wieder aus,” it seems exactly true: he was weird when he came and he is still weird when he leaves, and somehow, thanks to Britten’s playing, the whole outside world reflects his weirdness. When I try to imagine this fellow, I think of Heine’s “Der arme Peter”– the people who see him say that he looks as if he has just stepped out of the grave, but he is actually on his way to the grave. And he has had a “kick-me” sign on his back since birth. This “Winterreise” protagonist seems very similar, someone who could never fit in and has nowhere to go but down to destruction. If I follow Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore through “Winterreise,” as I have done countless times, there is a mounting anxiety and uneasiness, as the wanderer feels himself drifting further and further away from life as everyone else lives it and finally realizes that he can never get back, that he will be isolated for the rest of his life. There is an underlying horror in “Der Leiermann,” as if the wanderer is looking in a mirror and seeing his own face and realizing that this is what he has become. With Pears and Britten, on the other hand, it’s almost as if he is going home to where he belongs. It’s eerie. The cycle never resolves itself, you don’t reach catharsis. Maybe it’s what Schubert had in mind, I don’t know. I just know that it makes me profoundly uncomfortable and I’m glad I have experienced it.” (Celia A. Sgroi)

If you want to cheer yourself up on a cold, wet, miserable day when you’re tormented by existential angst… well the Winterreise is just the thing for you.

The Wunderlich is indeed not too shabby. An die Musik and im Abendrot are my two favourite non-cycle Schubertlieder — selected by the scientific method: I listened to a DG compilation of Fischer-Dieskau singing *all* of them whilst doing various chores and took notice when something really jumped out.

@Rufus:

Indeed nothing says Christmas like Bertolt #@$%ing Brecht. Mind you, he’s handy to keep in the back pocket for when new people’s are being elected. But that’s it for me.