MARC BLITZSTEIN. As a composer, Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) is best known for Regina, an opera based on Lillian Hellman’s play The Little Foxes and now his most frequently performed composition, and for his pro-union musical The Cradle Will Rock, which famously defied censorship by the Works Progress Administration in 1937 and inspired a 1999 film by Tim Robbins. Other major works include I’ve Got the Tune, No for an Answer, the Airborne Symphony, Reuben Reuben, and the Broadway musical Juno. As contemporaries in the American musical theater, Kurt Weill and Marc Blitzstein shared common interests in creating socially conscious, populist theater, fusing classical and popular musical idioms, and developing American opera. Blitzstein’s English adaptation of Weill and Brecht’s 1928 Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera) catapulted the work into lasting prominence on U.S. stages and established “Mack the Knife” as one of the top popular songs of the 20th century. The legendary off-Broadway stage production at the Theater de Lys ran from 1954 to 1961 for a total of 2,707 performances, setting the record as the longest-running musical in history up to that date. The MGM cast album sold in record-breaking numbers, and recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, and Ella Fitzgerald, among countless others, sent “Mack the Knife” to the top of the charts.
