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It directly challenges the audience by breaching the " fourth wall" with what he called verfremdung, or alienation technique . For example, slogans are projected on the back wall and the characters sometimes carry picket signs, or stand at times with their backs to the audience. The play challenges conventional notions of property as well as theater. It asks the central rhetorical question, "Who is the bigger criminal: He who robs a bank or he who founds one?"

Despite the title and alienating techniques, it is as much a musical comedy as it is an opera. Except for the "Overture", the songs are relatively simple in form and the orchestra is a distinctly jazzy small combo. The score, by Kurt Weill, was deeply influenced by jazz. The opening song, "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", was adopted by Louis Armstrong as " Mack the Knife". It was also a pop hit for Bobby Darin.

The opera is based on the English poet John Gay's 1728 operatic satire, The Beggar's Opera. The central character in both is Macheath, who is an elegant highwayman in Gay's work and a vicious and violent anti-heroicIn literature and film, an anti-hero is a central or supporting character that has some of the personality flaws and ultimate fortune traditionally assigned to villains but nonetheless also have enough heroic qualities or intentions to gain the sympathy o criminal who sees himself as a businessman in the Brecht-Weill version.

In the Threepenny Opera, MacHeath (Mack the Knife), marries Polly Peachum. This displeases her father, Jonathan Peachum, who controls the beggars of LondonLondon is the capital of the United Kingdom and of England, and with over seven million inhabitants in the Greater London area, is the second-most populous conurbation in Europe (after Moscow). From being Londinium the capital of the Roman province of Bri, and he endeavours to have MacHeath hanged. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that the chief of police, Tiger Brown, is an old friend of MacHeath's. Peachum exerts considerable political influence, and eventually MacHeath is arrested and imprisoned, escapes, then imprisoned once more. At the point of execution, in an unrestrained parodyIn contemporary usage, parody is a form of satire that imitates another work of art in order to ridicule it. Parody exists in all art media, including literature, music, and cinema. In ancient Greek literature, a parody was a type of poem that imitated an of a happy ending, a hard-riding messenger from the king dramatically arrives at the last minute, and Macheath is pardoned and given a baronetcy. (Another Brecht-Weill work is titled Happyend .)

In 1954Events January events January 14 The Hudson Motor Car Company merges with Nash-Kelvinator forming the American Motors Corporation January 14 Marilyn Monroe weds Joe DiMaggio. January 15 Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya January 20 The Nati Lotte LenyaLotte Lenya ( October 18, 1898 November 27, 1981), singer and actor, born Karoline Wilhelmine Blamauer in Vienna, Austria. As a child of working class parents, Lenya wanted to be a dancer. She moved to study in Zurich, Switzerland in 1914, taking up her f won a Tony AwardWhat is popularly called the Tony Award but is formally the Antoinette Perry Award is an annual American award celebrating achievements in theater, including musical theater. Awarded by a panel of approximately 700 judges from various areas of the industr for her role as Jenny in a somewhat softened version of the Threepenny Opera by Marc BlitzsteinMarc Blitzstein ( 1905- 1964) was an American composer. He was gay, though he married novelist Eva Goldbeck. Among his most successful works were The Cradle Will Rock whose premiere was directed by Orson Welles, the opera Regina an adaptation of Lillian H that played on and off Broadway for many years. Lenya, who was married to Weill, had also played the role of the "Pirate Jenny" in the original German production. Her ballad fantasizing leaving her work as a barmaid to lead a pirate assault on the city is the second best known song in the work with its chorus, "And the ship with black sails, and with 50 cannons, will beseige the city".

The original German version was very popular. It was performed more than 10,000 times and translated into 18 languages. Interestingly, when this play was translated into French, it was given a name in French that means "The Fourpenny Opera", L'Opéra de quat'sous. It has been translated into English several times, most notably by Blitzstein in 1954, noted Irish playwright and translator Frank McGuinness in 1992, and by Jeremy Sams for a British National Theater production in 2002. Ralph Mannheim and John Willett produced an English translation in 1979.

There have been at least four film versions. German director Georg Wilhelm Pabst made German- and French-language versions simultaneously (a common practice in the early days of sound films) in 1931. Another version was directed by Wolfgang Staudte in West Germany in 1962 (scenes with Sammy Davis, Jr. were added for the American release). The most recent one was an American version (renamed Mack the Knife) in 1990, directed by Menahem Golan , with Raúl Juliá and Roger Daltrey.