The show was a hit in Berlin and its success spread throughout Europe, with 46 productions opening during the first year of the Berlin run. Within the next 5 years, there had been 130 productions worldwide with a total of over 10,000 performances and had been translated into 18 languages.
Although the show was produced on a small scale in Germany and the United States after World War II, Weill and Brecht both wanted to see a major production done in the U.S. (There had been an unsuccessful Broadway production in 1933.) In Europe, the Nazis had banned all of Brecht and Weill's works because they were deemed "degenerate." It has been said that at the display of degenerate art at the Neues Museum in Berlin, recordings of The Threepenny Opera were played constantly as an example. But Weill and Brecht were never able to reach agreement about a second major U.S. production.
The song "Mack the Knife" has become a jazz standard due to recordings by Louis Armstrong, Bobby Darin, Ella Fitzgerald and many others.
In February 2010, Andy Serkis and Nick Cave announced that they were working on a motion-capture version of The Threepenny Opera.
The 1940s saw Brecht and Weill trying to get the show produced in various ways.
In 1941, both Brecht and Weill were working on all-black versions of The Threepenny Opera separately. Neither attempt resulted in a production.
In 1942, MGM considered making a film based on the show. Along with that and other attention from unnamed New York producers, Weill wrote to the Justice Department's Office of Alien Property to attempt to get the work freed from its European rights-holders. His justification for this request was that the Nazis had banned the work and that he was unable to contact the European rights-holders because of the war so the rights should revert back to him and Brecht.
Although both Weill and Brecht wanted the show to have later life, Brecht was difficult, rarely answering Weill's letters and thereby not making it easy. In frustration, Weill even talked to Maxwell Anderson about the two of them creating another adaptation of The Beggar's Opera.
The hopes of another New York production were dashed in 1946 when Beggar's Holiday (also based on The Beggar's Opera) opened on Broadway.
Controversial Brecht scholar John Fuegi believes that Elisabeth Hauptmann wrote over half of the script of The Threepenny Opera. Hauptmann sas Brecht's secretary and sometimes his lover. She is officially credited with the translation of The Beggar's Opera into German that provided the source material. Most Brecht scholars seem to believe that Fuegi overstates the extent of Hauptmann's contributions.
