The Beggar's Opera

The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera, a satiric play using some of the conventions of opera, but without the recitative. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama. The airs in the play are set to popular ballads of the time. It was written in 1728 by John Gay, and the music was arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. The play was targeted at the prevailing interest in Italian opera, as well as being meant to lampoon the notable whig statesman Robert Walpole and the famous criminal Jonathan Wild. It also deals with social inequity on a broad scale, primarily through the comparison of low-class thieves and whores with their aristocratic and bourgeoise "betters." It is the first, and only successful example of the ballad opera, although it is an ancestor of the plays of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and eventually Gilbert and Sullivan. Gay cuts the standard five acts to three, and tightly controls the dialogue and plot so that there are delightful surprises in each of the forty-five fast-paced scenes.

Related Topics:
Ballad opera - Opera - Recitative - Augustan drama - Ballads - 1728 - John Gay - Johann Christoph Pepusch - Whig - Robert Walpole - Jonathan Wild - Richard Brinsley Sheridan - Gilbert and Sullivan

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The original idea of the opera came from Jonathan Swift, who wrote to Alexander Pope

Related Topics:
Jonathan Swift - Alexander Pope

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on August 30, 1716 asking "...what think you, of a Newgate pastoral among the thieves and whores there?" Their friend, Gay, decided that it would be a comedy rather than a pastoral. It became his greatest success.

Related Topics:
August 30 - 1716 - Newgate - Pastoral

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Exactly 200 years later, in 1928, Bertolt Brecht (words) and Kurt Weill (music) wrote a musical based on The Beggar's Opera titled The Threepenny Opera.

Related Topics:
1928 - Bertolt Brecht - Kurt Weill - The Threepenny Opera

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It was also adapted, in a non-musical form, by Czech playwright/president Václav Havel in 1975.

Related Topics:
Czech - Václav Havel

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