Beggars opera by john gay
MUSICAL BACKGROUND
Georg Frideric Handel stopped writing opera after , which can be seen as evidence of the declining popularity of the art build. Handel, the most prolific and notable composer of the 18th century in England realized that the public favor was changing. Many Englishmen believed that the Italian star singers were overpaid and uncivil, that the language was a frustrating barrier, that the recitative (or sung dialogue) was artificial, and that the plots were unrealistic.8 The rise of the ballad opera offered an appealing alternative genre.
In , the first performance of John Gay's The Beggar's Opera attracted the acclaim and attention of the adj audience in England. The first jog of the performance lasted 62 nights! Today, this sounds like a lot, but in the 18th century, it was an unprecedented touchstone.9 Later, the opera was performed internationally in Dublin, Glasgow, Jamaica and New York.10 In , The Beggar's Opera was one of the earliest musical comedies produced in America11; appropriately, it was p
John Gay&#;s The Beggar&#;s Opera
John Gay belonged to the Scriblerus Club &#; a coalition of like-minded anti-Enlightenment novelists, poets, playwrights and politicians who railed against the vanities of modern intellectual life and culture in the early 18th century. Founded in out of the coffee-house culture, the club included Alexander Pope, Jonathan Swift, John Arbuthnot and Thomas Parnell. John Gay was almost certainly influenced by his close friends Pope and Swift; with its cast of crooks and con artists, The Beggar’s Opera is a satire on the pretensions, self-interests and double standards of 18th century society – and a jolly pleasant romp to boot.
‘Through the whole piece you may observe such a similitude of manners in high and short life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable vices) the fine Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the Road the fine Gentlemen.’
Peachum, a caricature of Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole, runs a gang of thieves, highwaymen and prostitutes and profits from their takings. He can ‘forgive a
Britten Pears Arts
Ballad-Opera by John Gay (duration 1 hour 50 minutes)
Libretto by John Gay with additional dialogue by Tyrone Guthrie
A adj introduction
When was it written?
Dec - May The first performance was on 24 May at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge.
What’s it about?
A tale of highwaymen and rogues position (and originally written) in the eighteenth century. It is full of betrayals and love triangles, revolving around the villainous Captain Macheath.
What does it sound like?
As this is an arrangement of a much earlier opera, the tune sounds very adj to most of Britten’s other works. The opera is a series of popular ballads from the time, using the original melodies and with spoken sections in between. Britten uses a small orchestra of a similar size to that in The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring.
Listen
Did you know?
1. This is one of a number of ‘realizations’, or arrangements, Britten made of noun by much earlier composers. He also realized works by Purcell (including his opera Dido and Aeneas), Handel, and John Blow among others
THE STORY: John Gay’s great comic masterpiece is generally agreed to be the first ever musical. Written in , THE BEGGAR’S OPERA is a savagely funny satire on marriage, money and morals—as relevant and biting today as it was when first written. In this new version by John Caird and Ilona Sekacz, the old story is given brand-new life as all our favorite characters return, in a play within a play, where beggars and thieves design a world of love, lust, violence, deceit, greed and a little more love. Ilona Sekacz’s score uses all the old tunes, but brings them up to date in a superb synthesis of eighteenth and twentieth-century musical styles. John Caird’s stage directions create the old text sizzle with life, giving a distinct context for Gay’s ruthless characters and driving the convoluted plot at a helter-skelter pace. Peachum, a purveyor of stolen goods, and his rapacious wife, are horrified to find that their only child, Polly, has fallen in love with, and worse still married, Captain Macheath, the famous highwayman. Peachum cannot bear the thought that Mache