Kurt Weill, "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" aus der Dreigroschen Oper (1928)

Here's a recording accompanied by interesting quasi-expressionist crayon drawings:


(n.b. I can't find a website with a good side-by-side translation. If you're interested, you might listen to one or both of the recordings below to get a sense of the lyrics)

Questions:

1. What instruments do you hear?
   
2. Does the tone of the music match the content of the lyrics?
   
3. Would you classify this as opera, musical theatre, or something else? Why? What distinguishes one genre from the other?
   
4. What aspects of the song are popular? Which are more "classical?"
   
5. What aspects of the song make it amenable to adaptations and arrangements such as those seen below?
   
6. What problems are faced by someone trying to translate the lyrics? (As a point of departure, see how Google translates the first verse from German to English.
   

Additional resources:

• The Threepenny Opera webpage of the Kurt Weill Foundation
  
• Bobby Darin's version (which was, evidently, banned by some radio stations because it was thought to promote gang violence)
  
  
• A great recording by Ella Fitzgerald
  
  
• A compilation of McDonald's "Mac Tonight" commercials from the 1980s (sorry...)