Der Jasager is an opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 (specifically a Schuloper or 'school-opera') by Kurt Weill

Kurt Weill

Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...

 to a German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht

Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...

 (after Elisabeth Hauptmann

Elisabeth Hauptmann

Elisabeth Hauptmann was a German writer who worked with Bertolt Brecht....

's translation from Arthur Waley

Arthur Waley

Arthur David Waley CH, CBE was an English orientalist and sinologist.-Life:Waley was born in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England, as Arthur David Schloss, son of the economist David Frederick Schloss...

's English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 version of the Japanese

Japanese language

is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...

 Nō

Noh

, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...

 drama Taniko).

Its companion piece is Der Neinsager

Der Neinsager

Der Neinsager - like its companion piece Der Jasager - is a Lehrstück by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht. However, unlike Der Jasager, it was never made into an opera....

(He Said No) although Brecht's other text was never set by Weill.

Weill also identifies the piece, following Brecht's development of the experimental form, as a Lehrstück

Lehrstücke

The Lehrstücke are a radical and experimental form of modernist theatre developed by Bertolt Brecht and his collaborators from the 1920s to the late 1930s. The Lehrstücke stem from Brecht's Epic Theatre techniques but as a core principle explore the possibilities of learning through acting,...

, or 'teaching-piece'.

Performance history

It was first performed in Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 by students of the Akademie für Kirchen und Schulmusik at the Zentralinstitut für Erziehung und Unterricht on 23 June 1930 and broadcast simultaneously on the radio. It was successful and there were over 300 performances during the following three years.

Brecht subsequently revised the text twice, the final version, including Der Neinsager, being without music.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 23 June 1930 (Conductor: Kurt Drabeck)
The boy	treble Boy soprano A boy soprano is a young male singer with an unchanged voice in the soprano range. Although a treble, or choirboy, may also be considered to be a boy soprano, the more colloquial term boy soprano is generally only used for boys who sing, perform, or record as soloists, and who may not necessarily...
The mother	mezzo-soprano Mezzo-soprano A mezzo-soprano is a type of classical female singing voice whose range lies between the soprano and the contralto singing voices, usually extending from the A below middle C to the A two octaves above...
The teacher	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Otto Hopf
First student	treble or tenor
Second student	treble or tenor
Third student	treble or baritone

Sources

• Amadeus Almanac, accessed 31 October 2008
• Hinton, Stephen. 1992. "Jasager, Der". In The New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  New Grove Dictionary of Opera
  The New Grove Dictionary of Opera is an encyclopedia of opera, considered to be one of the best general reference sources on the subject. It is the largest work on opera in English, and in its printed form, amounts to 5,448 pages in four volumes....
  
  . Ed. Stanley Sadie. London:. ISBN 0-333-73432-7.
• Weill, Kurt
  Kurt Weill
  Kurt Julian Weill was a German-Jewish composer, active from the 1920s, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht...
  
  . 1930. Interview. In Collected Plays: Three by Bertolt Brecht
  Bertolt Brecht
  Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
  
  . Ed. and trans. John Willett. Brecht Collected Plays Ser. London: Methuen, 1997. ISBN 9780413704603. p.334-335.