Set in the so-called 'slums,' among criminals, prostitutes and corrupt policemen,opera is endowed with inexhaustible vitality, blending bitter morality and hilarious estrangement play. The author's thesis is that the methods of the underworld do not deviate from from those of the gentlemen and the powerful, but with the added perspective of class struggle, whereby thieves and exploiters turn out in the end to be victims of the system as well. Famous also for some of its characters that have become paradigmatic, and for the songs that, extrapolated, shine in their own light, L'opera from three-money has the characteristic of being extremely smooth and enjoyable in form but rich in implications and cultural and political references. Jonathan Peachum is successfully engaged in the beggar's equipment trade. Business with "the poorest of the poor" goes to swimmingly. One day, however, he comes to to learn that his daughter Polly has secretly married gangster Mackie Messer. Peachum is shocked. Despite Polly's warnings the newly married Mackie does not flee town; on the contrary, he visits the Turnbridge prostitutes and is from betrayed by them. His execution seems inevitable when a "knight" of the Queen intervenes and orders Mackie's release and promotion into the nobility.

A comic and sensual, grotesque and perverse Brecht is the one revealed from Wilson at the Berliner Ensemble. Wilson used the story in all its faces, threads and thicknesses, reversing the sequence: first the images, the movements; then as actor's solos the speeches. Another great surprise are the performances of Kurt Weill's music: the pirate ship is transformed into a sadistic little girl's song; resounding in energy is the "Kanonen-Song" between former comrades Macheath and policeman Tiger Brown, a ballet of puppets gone mad.