The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music and European American Music Corporation are pleased to announce the publication of the new critical edition of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) as part of their collected edition series, the Kurt Weill Edition (KWE). The new edition is co-edited by Stephen Hinton, one of the pre-eminent Weill scholars active in the world today, and Edward Harsh, the Managing Editor of the KWE project.

Ever since its first production took Berlin by storm in 1928, Die Dreigroschenoper has been widely seen as one of the most important music-theatrical works of the twentieth-century as well as an icon of Weimar culture. Still, through seventy-two years and literally thousands of productions, the work had never been available in an authoritative edition. The new edition reconciles the many confusions of detail in the three key sources that emerged from that famed original 1928 production: Weill's manuscript, the published libretto, and the published piano-vocal score. But the editors went far beyond those three items to consult several dozen other documents, from the original, hand-written instrumental parts to Weill's correspondence with his publisher Universal Edition, to contemporaneous press reviews and recordings.

The result is a corrected, self-consistent version true to the historical state of the work that first so electrified its audiences. The edition presents not just the musical text but the complete dialogue and stage instructions in their proper sequence as well. Included are many features never before published. For instance, the original production included six pieces of instrumental stage music based upon a few of the work's most popular songs. The editors were able to reconstruct five of these from the instrumental parts and have included them in a special appendix. Another appendix offers additional strophes that could be used by performers as alternatives or supplements to four of the songs in the main text.

The new edition was used for the first time on the recently-released BMG recording by the Ensemble Modern and HK Gruber, a recording that has earned critical raves:

This new two-disc set of Kurt Weill's The Threepenny Opera, featuring composer and chansonnier HK Gruber with the excellent Ensemble Modern of Frankfurt, wrenches you mercilessly our of your comfy chair into the grubby world of 1920s Weimar Republic theatre. . . . The content of Weill's and Brecht's low-life adaptation of The Beggars' Opera was never set in tablets of stone. Even at its first performance in 1928, circumstances dictated ad hoc additions omissions right up to the last minute. Based on the new Kurt Weill Edition, prepared by Stephen Hinton and Edward Harsh, this recording incorporates the fruits of their research, including instrumental entr-actes and scene-setting summaries devised by Brecht for a 1930s concert version.

--The Daily Telegraph (London)

Das Ensemble Modern garantiert messerscharfe Präzision und sanften Swing, schräge Verrücktheiten und subversive Phantasie ohne Ende. HK Gruber dirigiert mit Besessenheit am Detail und Liebe zum Stück. Die Aufnahme ist nicht nur Ohrenbalsam und interpretatorischer Glücksfall, der den Übergang Weills ins nächste Jahrtausend vorzeichnet, sondern auch eine editorische Pioniertat. Zugrunde liegt nämlich zum ersten Mal die kritische Neuausgabe der Kurt Weill Foundation.

--Opernwelt