The title of this work has nothing to do with the tropical hardwood with a similar-sounding name but ‘Mahagonny’, according to one of the characters, means ‘spider’s web’. According to its writer, Bertolt Brecht, however, it was just a made-up word for the artificial city that forms its theme. Brecht wrote it in 1930 together with the composer and song-writer Kurt Weill and the collaboration brought together perhaps the two greatest talents in German theatre of the time.

The story starts with the breakdown of a vehicle containing three escaping convicts who, motivated by a mixture of greed and desperation, decide to build a city called Mahagonny which will attract the wealthy and relieve them of their money. The result brings us a dark satire on the breakdown of society itself as the dreams and riches brought to the city wither and die. Death is a recurrent theme, whether it is death in a boxing ring, death by over-eating or being sentenced to death by electrocution for the crime of failing to pay one’s whiskey bill.

As a stage work, it offers a marked contrast with almost anything else one is likely to see in an opera house. Weill’s composition offers a wide range of styles, from cabaret to musical and opera, with the first of those most prevalent. The cast in this production cope magnificently with these demands, with fine performances from singers usually associated with more traditional operatic works.

New Zealand tenor Simon O’Neill gives a powerful performance as Jimmy MacIntyre, who loses the fortune he has made as a lumberjack in Alaska, while Australian-American soprano Danielle de Niese gives a glorious portrayal of Jimmy’s favourite prostitute Jenny Smith who eventually proves to be a tart without a heart when she refuses to save him by paying his whiskey bill. Her captivating delivery of the opera’s best known song, Alabama, was the high point of the evening. The Alabama Song, incidentally, has been recorded by several artistes including David Bowie and The Doors, which is a claim very few if any other operatic arias can claim.

The orchestra coped very well with the varying demands of Weill’s music under the German conductor André de Ridder who is the new ENO Music Director. Sometimes, however, the orchestra came close to drowning the singers, forcing the audience to rely heavily on the surtitles to see what was being sung. This was not entirely a bad thing, as the translation from the original German was excellently accomplished by Jeremy Sams, who always shows the knack of producing an impressive and natural-sounding English libretto.

The biggest problem, however, was the theatre itself. With 2,359 seats, the London Coliseum is a huge venue, London’s largest, and The Fall and Rise of the City of Mahagonny ought to provoke a Cabaret atmosphere. One can easily imagine this opera working best with a small and somewhat raucous audience sitting around tables and entering the spirit of the piece. The Coliseum audience is far too polite and restrained to join in the fun and this production by Jamie Manton gave them little excuse to do so.