Mahagonny is always going to be a problem piece for American opera companies. Although ostensibly set in the US, its songs of Alabama and the Alaska gold fields are about a mythical country that Brecht invented. The characters are pure 1920s Berlin - Begbick, the bordello madame and her cronies, Jenny the put-upon whore, and the three pals, Jimmy, Jack and Joe.

In this production there is an uneasy mix of opera and music-theatre singers. The balance achieved by the recording is good, and does not hint at what amplification there may have been in the theatre. Patti LuPone, great performer that she is, does not have the voice for Begbick, although visually she is fine, a hard-bitten, ruthless procuress, who looks as raddled as Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. Audra McDonald is a superb Jenny and sings with a sweetness and purity that make the cynicism of the lyrics all the more telling. With a Louise Brooks haircut and wearing a slinky see-through sequined dance tunic, she dominates each scene in which she appears.

It is Jim, though, who has to hold the opera together. Anthony Dean Griffey makes a fine stab at the music, and aided by James Conlon's hard-driven account of the score, he and the ensemble rise to the great finale of Act 1, in which Jim gives the city its motto, “As you make your bed, so you must lie in it”. In staging his execution, for the crime of not being able to pay for his whisky, there is a muddled scene in which he is given a lethal injection: Mahagonny is not for the squeamish.

The opera is sung in Michael Feingold's translation, which has a somewhat softening effect. Maybe it's just the American vowels, but one misses the snap and snarl of the original German. If you want Mahagonny on DVD, the Salzburg production with Jerry Hadley as Jim (ArtHaus, 11/01) is probably a better bet than this, which is well worth seeing, though, especially for Audra McDonald.