Gallery > Dark Visions
Night Stalker
A knife-wielding killer awaits his prey in a dingy nineteenth-century alley. Many viewers have assumed that this is a depiction of Jack the Ripper. It was actually inspired by Mac the Knife, anti-hero of The Beggar's Opera. I first encountered the German reworking of this story by Berthold Brecht. The stage production features music by one of my idols, Kurt Weill. The ballad of Mac the Knife has been covered many times. While singers such as Bobby Darren have made it lighter and more tuneful, I far prefer the Nick Cave version, which is dark and grating like the German original.
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