Brandauer is booed on opening night

Klaus Maria Brandauer's eagerly awaited production of The Threepenny Opera has received a mixed reception.

While the German rock star Campino, who stars as Mack the Knife, was cheered, there were also scattered boos for the conventional staging of the production. Some at Friday's premiere apparently found it too conventional, and there were boos after the curtain for Brandauer when he took his bow.

"When one is opening a new house, like the one here, you've got to have an idea of how to stage Brecht," said the German actor Peter Lohmeyer, one of 1,700 people in the audience at the newly restored Admiralspalast theatre. "This was nothing."

Once a top venue for cabaret and concerts in the decadent Berlin of the 1920s and 1930s, it had been closed since 1997.

Campino, the singer for the German rock band Die Toten Hosen, said he was not contemplating switching careers.