The Beggar's Opera: A Ballad Opera in Three Acts

The Beggar's Opera: A Ballad Opera in Three Acts
ISBN-10
1721003908
ISBN-13
9781721003907
Series
The Beggar's Opera
Pages
68
Language
English
Published
2018-06-11
Publisher
Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Author
John Gay

Description

The Beggar's Opera: A Ballad Opera in Three Acts by John Gay. 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 original idea of the opera came from Jonathan Swift, who wrote to Alexander Pope on 30 August 1716 asking "...what think you, of a Newgate pastoral among the thieves and whores there?" Their friend, Gay, decided that it would be a satire rather than a pastoral opera. For his original production in 1728, Gay intended all the songs to be sung without any accompaniment, adding to the shocking and gritty atmosphere of his conception.

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