American composer Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964) was a major composer in the left-leaning American theater of the 1930s, particularly through his musical The Cradle Will Rock (1936), and a direct influence on Leonard Bernstein. Beginning in an explicitly modernist vein, Blitzstein simplified his music in accord with the socialist dictum that music should serve the people. Subsequent stage works, such as the opera Regina (1949), met with mixed reviews but his English-language adaptation of Brecht-Weill's The Threepenny Opera (1953) proved Blitzstein's greatest success. Tragically, while in the process of composing an opera supported by a Ford Foundation grant, Blitzstein was murdered in Martinique.