Nadja Mchantaf

In an imaginary American city, God consigns its licentious citizens to hell but they truculently reply that they are already there. Mahagonny ‘the city of nets’ is founded in the desert by three criminals on the run from the police. It is to be a city devoted to pleasure. The only god is money. So Jimmy Mahoney, the hedonistic lumberjack, is condemned to death for being unable to pay the bill for the whisky he has consumed. A testament to the fertile but fraught collaboration between composer Kurt Weill and man of theatre Bertolt Brecht, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is one of the great operas of the 20th century. Brecht might have resented the dominance of the music over the words but together they created a work with rich melody and unstoppable dramatic momentum.

In the cold of winter, an exuberant poet lives in poverty with his three bohemian flatmates. His heart is warmed when he falls in love with his fragile neighbour, but then her illness takes a turn for the worse. In this new production, Barrie Kosky stages a portrait of life caught between art, unrequited love and modern isolation in the face of death. German soprano and Komische Oper Berlin Ensemble member Nadja Mchantaf plays Mimì alongside the young Austrian-Australian tenor Gerard Schneider as Rodolfo.

Barrie Kosky peers into the abyss of the human soul and tackles one of the most important Symbolist masterpieces in the operatic repertoire.