The Threepenny Opera was first performed at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin in 1928, and, after an initially poor reception, went on to run 400 times in the next two years. (The performance was a springboard for one of the best known interpreters of Brecht and Weill's work, Lotte Lenya, who was married to Weill.) The work subsequently became a huge success, being translated into 18 languages and performed more than 10,000 times. It was translated into French as L'Opéra de quat'sous; (quatre sous, or four pennies being the idiomatically equivalent French expression for Threepenny and, by implication, cut-price, cheap). Georg Wilhelm Pabst's French version of his film also used this title. Die Dreigroschenoper has been translated into English several times. One was published by Blitzstein in the 1950s and first staged under Leonard Bernstein's baton at Brandeis University in 1952. It was later used on Broadway. Other translations include those by Ralph Manheim and John Willett (1979), by noted Irish playwright and translator Frank McGuinness (1992), and by Jeremy Sams for a production at London's Donmar Warehouse in 1994