At Tanglewood, a Weimar-era city of sin amid the Mozart

From left: Rebecca Jo Loeb, Zachary Wilder, Mischa Bouvier, Alex Richardson, and Jonathan Beyer in ''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.'' (Hilary scott)

LENOX - At Tanglewood this weekend, it was Sacher torte and dark espresso, old Vienna and the jolt of opera making itself new. In the Shed the Boston Symphony Orchestra gave itself nothing to play but Mozart, leaving it to the Tanglewood Music Center to make the weekend's news. It did so with a fully staged production of Kurt Weill's brilliantly satirical "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" in the Tanglewood Theater.

This landmark Weill-Brecht collaboration captures the elusive essence of the city and the age that brought it into being: Weimar-era Berlin, where classical music was embracing the energy and tumult of the streets. Yet these days, the work's tunefully truculent critique of capitalist culture has lost none of its relevance - in fact the last two years have seen a spate of new productions of the work, in Los Angeles, Boston, and elsewhere, suggesting that the opera's subject matter may be more timely than ever.

"Mahagonny" tells the story of a sybaritic wonderland, a "city of nets" designed to ensnare men with its shameless catering to their sensual appetites. A simple woodsman from Alaska, Jimmy Mahoney, falls under its spell but also knows intuitively that all is not right. He meets a tragic end after his friends have died through overeating and boxing. Mahagonny encourages all manner of excess, but Jimmy commits the cardinal sin of failing to pay one's bill for booze. He is executed.

Weill's score is a remarkable balancing act that melds the ancient and modern, the classical and the popular, from Bach to cabaret, from Mahler to the foxtrot. The unity of its disunity is extraordinary, and while many have braved Weill's path of high-low synthesis, his work set a standard that not even he could sustain. James Levine has long been a champion of this score and introduced it to the Met's repertoire in 1979. He had naturally been slated to conduct the weekend's two performances, with a third being taken up by the TMC fellow Erik Nielsen. But when Levine had to pull out of the Tanglewood season for unexpected surgery, he gave Nielsen the green light for the entire run.

On Saturday's opening performance, the young conductor did a commendable and utterly professional job in this high-profile substitution. From the outset he showed an instinctual feel for the thrust and bite of this tartly ironic music. That said, one might have wished him even more of the courage of his convictions, as the music would have benefited from a dryer snap, and at times more rhythmic charge and momentum.

Doug Fitch's modestly scaled production covered the bases and did little to offend but also little to sharpen the affair. His sets went for a Brechtian, purposefully primitive look, with large multipurpose carts on wheels and hand-scrawled banners with scene captions that were hoisted jerkily across the top of the stage. The meteorological stage projections of the hurricane that almost hits Mahagonny felt a bit gimmicky.

This cast was made up of young and very early-career TMC vocal fellows, many of whom were still learning to inhabit their characters with full conviction. The exception was Christin-Marie Hill, who sang the role of the gangster-in-chief Leocadia Begbick with great relish, poise, and a booming operatic voice. Steven Ebel was a capable and sweet-toned Jimmy Mahoney. Rebecca Jo Loeb lent a pleasing mezzo to the iconic role of the prostitute Jenny, though there was a lot of room to grow in her dramatic portrayal. Jonathan Beyer and Alex Richardson were generally deft in their roles as Trinity Moses and Fatty the Bookkeeper respectively. At intermission, listeners could be overheard complaining of the lack of super-titles. It's too bad that this production still needed them, given the fact that the venue is small and the opera was sung in English translation.

In the Mozart department, I caught the BSO's Friday and Saturday night programs. A highlight was Leon Fleisher's glowing rendition of the slow movement from the Piano Concerto No. 12, which brimmed with a kind of quiet autumnal wisdom. The next night, violinist Stefan Jackiw and violist Lawrence Power never quite bridged their vast differences in performance style but their lithe rendition of the Sinfonia Concertante earned them a robust ovation. In the next few days, the action shifts to Ozawa Hall, with Frederica von Stade in recital on Wednesday and the pioneering Kronos Quartet on Thursday.

Jeremy Eichler can be reached at jeichler@globe.com.