Two Songspiels:
Little Mahaqonny and Happy End Two rarely-performed works by WEILL and BRECHT, which cheerfully and sardonically castigate the bourgeois society of the 1920s. Little Mahagonny is a restaging of its famous first production at Baden-Baden in 1927. Its unconventional setting in a boxing ring and its songs, including jazz and popular rhythms, came as a shock to the audience.
Happy End is a gangster comedy. ! It contains some of Weill's most famous songs. Tonight's version has been specially devised for TV, and the set is designed after drawings by PATRICK PROCKTOR.
A Salvation Army chorus
LONDON SINFONIETTA VOICES chorus-master TERRY EDWARDS
A dance band LONDON SINFONIETTA Its conductor DAVID ATHERTON
Sound RAYMUND ANGEL Lighting PETER CATLETT
Make-up MAUREEN WINSLADE Costumes ANNE BAILEY Designer FIONA COMRIE Directed by PETER ADAM and PETER BUTLER ' (As a companion piece to these two Weill works a profile of Lotte Lenya. the composer's widow, Thursday BBC1)