show category: musical

A performance presented by the Excelsior Theatre as part of the Opera Aperta International Festival 2025

The charismatic antihero Macheath (known as Mack the Knife) secretly marries Polly, the daughter of Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, the leader of a well-organized network of beggars in London. Outraged by their daughter’s choice, the Peachums plot Macheath’s arrest with the help of the authorities. Betrayed by his former lover, Jenny, Macheath is captured and sentenced to death. However, fate takes an unexpected turn: he is saved at the last moment by a royal pardon issued on the very day of Queen Victoria’s coronation.

Set in a degraded urban landscape populated by the outcasts of Victorian London – beggars, petty criminals, and women on the edge of survival – Mack the Knife’s story becomes a satirical allegory about corruption, complicity, and social hypocrisy. Blending cabaret elements and biting irony, the show delves into the collapse of human values and the vulnerability of the individual in a world where rules exist only to be broken.

A true „theatrum mundi”, where the clashing voices of society wrestle with a timeless question:
What does it mean to be human?

„The Threepenny Opera is an unconventional musical – a non-musical that ironically and intelligently comments on the genre itself, while intertwining it with others, such as lieder and cabaret. It is a performance that ignores the classic „recipe” of what a traditional musical is supposed to be.”
– Răzvan Mazilu, director

Recommended age: 16+
The performance includes an intermission and ends around 9:30 PM.