Mack the Knife

"Mack the Knife" or "The Ballad of Mack the Knife", originally "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer", is a song composed by Kurt Weill with lyrics by Bertolt Brecht for their music drama Die Dreigroschenoper, or, as it is known in English, The Threepenny Opera. It premiered in Berlin in 1928 at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm. The song has become a popular standard recorded by many artists, including a US and UK number one hit for Bobby Darin in 1959.

The Threepenny Opera

A moritat (from mori meaning "deadly" and tat meaning "deed") is a medieval version of the murder ballad performed by strolling minstrels. In The Threepenny Opera, the moritat singer with his street organ introduces and closes the drama with the tale of the deadly Mackie Messer, or Mack the Knife, a character based on the dashing highwayman Macheath in John Gay's The Beggar's Opera (who was in turn based on the historical thief Jack Sheppard). The Brecht-Weill version of the character was far more cruel and sinister, and has been transformed into a modern anti-hero.

Mack the Knife (disambiguation)

Mack the Knife (in German Mackie Messer) is the nickname of Macheath, a character from The Threepenny Opera, and also the name of a song from that work. It is also the title of the US film adaptation of the opera.

Other uses of the term, presumably all based on the original use, include:

Mack the Knife (film)

Mack the Knife is a 1989 film adaptation of the 1928 Brecht/Weill musical The Threepenny Opera.

Plot

In 19th century London, young Polly Peachum falls for the famous womanizing criminal Macheath and they decide to get married, but because of her family's disapproval, her father ("the king of thieves") has MacHeath arrested.

Cast

Production

Juliá reprises the role of Macheath which won him a Tony nomination for a 1976 revival on Broadway. The film shows obvious signs of last minute editing, including several musical numbers that appear on the soundtrack album but are not in the final cut.

Home media

The film has never been released on DVD and as of April 2012, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment has yet to announce any plans for a DVD release.

The Knife

The Knife was a Swedish electronic music duo from Gothenburg formed in 1999. The group consisted of siblings Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer, who together also run their own record company, Rabid Records. The group gained a large international following in response to their 2003 album Deep Cuts.

The duo's first tour took place in 2006, along with the release of their critically acclaimed album Silent Shout. They have won a number of Swedish Grammis, but refuse to attend awards ceremonies. They have appeared in public wearing Venetian masks. Andersson released a solo album under the name Fever Ray in 2009, while Olof Dreijer released several EPs as Oni Ayhun in late 2009 and early 2010. The Knife disbanded in November 2014 after playing the final dates of their Shaking the Habitual Tour.

History

Formed in Gothenburg in 1999, amidst the deterioration of Karin's former group Honey Is Cool, the group perhaps gained stronger international recognition when José González covered their song "Heartbeats" on his 2003 album, Veneer. The cover was used by Sony in a commercial for BRAVIA television sets, and released as a single in 2006. The group commented on this in a Dagens Nyheter article, claiming that Sony paid a large sum of money to use the song. Despite the group's anti-commercial views, they justified the transaction by citing their need for money to establish a record company.

Autopsia

Autopsia is an art project dealing with music and visual production. Autopsia gathers authors of different professions in realization of multimedia projects. Its art practice began in London in the late 1970s, continued during the 1980s in the art centers of former Yugoslavia. Since 1990, Autopsia has acted from Prague, Czech Republic. At the beginning of its activity, Autopsia issued dozens of MCs. In the period after 1989, twenty CDs were issued, at first for Staalplaat from Amsterdam, then for German label Hypnobeat and London's Gymnastic Records. One of its compositions is a part of the soundtrack for Peter Greenaway's The Pillow Book. Music production of Autopsia can be classified as experimental, breakcore, avant-garde, ambient, industrial; it's associated with a large graphic production which consists of original graphic objects, design of flyers, posters, booklets, CDs, experimental films and audio installations.

Discography

Studio albums

The Knife (song)

"The Knife" is a protest song by progressive rock band Genesis from their second album Trespass from 1970. It was performed live often in the band's early days (a live version appears on the Genesis Live album from 1973) and has appeared sporadically in the band's setlists all the way up through 1982 (after 1975, however, they performed an edited four-minute version). The first half of the song was released as a single in May 1971 with the second half as the B-side, but it did not chart.

The song was unusually aggressive for Genesis at the time, as most of their work consisted of soft, pastoral acoustic textures and poetic lyrics. It features a bouncy, march-like organ riff, heavily distorted guitars and bass, and fast drumming. (Peter Gabriel said he wanted to write something that had the excitement of "Rondo" by The Nice.) In the lyrics of the song, Gabriel, influenced by a book on Gandhi, "wanted to try and show how all violent revolutions inevitably end up with a dictator in power".