Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. The opera had its premiere in Leipzig in March 1930 and played in Berlin in December of the following year. The opera was banned by the Nazis in 1933 and did not have a significant production until the 1960s. Mahagonny as a city was intended to be a parable of capitalism stripped of its veneer of bourgeois respectability, as it "arose to meet the needs and desires of the people, and it was these same needs and desires that brought about its destruction". Ultimately, this was also intended as a commentary on the state of Weimar Germany; underneath that facade of prosperity and happiness, lay corruption and savagery. Under Brecht's and to some extent Weill's Marxist-influenced view of capitalism, it is created to provide people the goods and services they need, but it does so at the expense of reducing everything to a mere commodity. Furthermore, since obtaining wealth in capitalism is a cutthroat enterprise, the powerful are no better than a gang of bandits, and the law in turn is run by such thugs. Weill's score uses a number of styles, including rag-time, jazz and formal counterpoint, notably in the "Alabama Song" (covered by The Doors and later David Bowie). Lotte Lenya leads this 1958 cast recording on CBS. Wilhelm Bruckner-Ruggeberg conducts.