The Beggar's Opera - Gay, John 1685-1732 (London Bell, 1777)
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time.
The piece satirised Italian opera, which had become popular in London. According to The New York Times: "Gay wrote the work more as an anti-opera than an opera, one of its attractions to its 18th-century London public being its lampooning of the Italian opera style and the English public's fascination with it." Instead of the grand music and themes of opera, the work uses familiar tunes and characters that were ordinary people. Some of the songs were by opera composers like Handel, but only the most popular of these were used. The audience could hum along with the music and identify with the characters. The story satirised politics, poverty and injustice, focusing on the theme of corruption at all levels of society.
plate next to frontispiece containing an illustration of 'Mr. Vernon in the Character of Mackheat'
Originally published in 1728, see H1-017
As written by John Gay. Distinguished also the variations of the theatre, as performed at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane, Regulated from the Prompt-Book, by Permission of the Managers, by Mr. Hopkins, prompter
Keywords: 18th Century (1701-1800); Libretto; Ballad opera; Satire; London (United Kingdom)