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Weill's collaboration with Bertolt Brecht lasted only a scant four years, but it resulted in some important pieces. Brecht, who was not very well known when they first met, did not want to be a mere librettist for a famous composer. He wanted equal billing and his attitude eventually resulted in the break up of the relationship.

Brecht (1898-1956) had written a poem on the subject of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny as part of a prize-winning series called The Domestic Breviary. It was a parody on commonly read religious books of the time. He met the shy and seemingly unprepossessing Weill at a Berlin wine bar in 1927. Each liked the other's work and they started to turn Mahagonny into an opera. It took them a long time to do it, however, and they began work on The Threepenny Opera before finishing it.

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