By ALAN RICH [Variety, 11 February 2007]

Greeted, as will be its eternal fate, by a rousing round of cheers and an impressive chorus of dissent, the steel-edged masterpiece of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht howled its way into the Music Center over the weekend. A new production in body and intent, the handiwork above all of incoming music director James Conlon, this new "Mahagonny" brilliantly exposes (and that's the word) the agitprop turmoil of its time and place -- Germany on the brink of Nazi takeover, with a population willing to greet life's realities with sneers.