My teenage years can be evoked, as I think they can for a few of my former classmates at the High School of Music and Art, not by pop music, but by the street-smart dissonances and raunchy lyrics of The Three-Penny Opera. My closest friends and I went more than once to see the Brecht-Weill classic performed in the Village. We listened over and over to the record, held by its cynical, edgy daring and its erotic overtones—rap for would-be bohemians in the late 1950s—noting, however, that the record lyrics were less explicit than the theater version. Our parents thought it a little “adult” for fifteen-year-olds, but as old leftists, they generally approved of both the composer and the author. And since Lotte Lenya was in the cast, we were witnessing living theater history, which was educational. Later, when an amazing film of the original Berlin production with the young Lenya turned up, we rushed to see it and thrilled at its ra ...

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