Bertolt Brecht The Threepenny Opera. Mother Courage and Her Children Science After directing Shadows of Forgotten Artist_Ofelya Petrosyan After directing Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (renamed Wild Horses of Fire for most foreign distributions) Parajanov became something of an international celebrity and simultaneously a target of attacks from the system Marco Rosci states that while there is much speculation about Leonardo The Threepenny Opera (1928) and Mother Courage and Her Children (1939) are masterpieces of Brechtian drama The first is a social satire written on the plot of John Gray's "The Beggar's Opera" (1728) in the spirit of a ballad musical