THE BEGGAR'S OPERA (John Gay - Pepch) New Versn by Frerick At Produced by John Gielgud CAST INCLUDES: Roy Henrson, Bce Flegg, Constance Willis,...
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JOHN GAY’S THE BEGGAR’S OPERA
The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera three acts by John Gay, performed at Lln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, 1728 and published the same year. The work b edy and polil satire prose terspersed wh songs set to ntemporary and tradnal English, Irish, Sttish, and * john gay beggar's opera *
The Beggar’s Opera, a ballad opera three acts by John Gay, performed at Lln’s Inn Fields Theatre, London, 1728 and published the same year. In , Gay portrays the liv of a group of thiev and prostut 18th-century London.
Gay ritur the ernment, fashnable society, marriage, and Italian operatic style. Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill based their ballad opera Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera) on Gay’s work.
BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN GAY
By pokg fun at 18th-century society The Beggar’s Opera, John Gay land himself a major h and, says Berta Jonc, paved the way for the morn mil" data-ttid="meta-scriptn * john gay beggar's opera *
The Beggar's OperaJohn GayJohn GayFictn | Play | Adult | Published 1728Plot SummaryThe Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay, is a ballad opera. John Gay wrote The Beggar’s Opera 1728 alongsi Johann Christoph Pepch, who arranged the Beggar’s Opera was England’s longt-nng productn of s time, wh 62 performanc given nsecutively 1728. Gay wasn’t the first to dream up the ia of a ballad opera; he was spired by his iend Jonathan Swift (known for many works, cludg Gulliver’s Travels), who thought would be tertg to wre a pastoral about Newgate prison.
In three acts, Gay’s work pok fun at how the upper class are so fond of Italian opera and Robert Walpole, a notor Whig polician, at the same time. Gay was not the only wrer to satirize him and his le as Prime Mister. Everyone jos a dance to celebrate his marriage to Polly at the end of the ballad example of satire The Beggar’s Opera is Gay’s mentary on equaly.
John Gay belonged to the Scribles Club – a aln of like-md anti-Enlightenment novelists, poets, playwrights and policians who railed agast the vani of morn tellectual life and culture the early 18th century. John Gay was almost certaly fluenced by his close iends Pope and Swift; wh s st of crooks and n artists, The Beggar’s Opera is a satire on the pretensns, self-terts and double standards of 18th century society – and a jolly good romp to boot. Gay drew spiratn for the character of Peachum om the famo real-life crimal, Jonathan Wild, who mastered a gang of thiev and outlaws and then betrayed them one by one to the legal system for pay-outs; over a hundred crimals were hanged based on his evince.
JOHN GAY: THE BEGGAR'S OPERA
Gay attacks what he se as the double standards of the legal profsn of his day: ‘The lawyers … don’t re that any body should get a clanste livelihood but themselv’.
Gay’s bourgeois dience would have nodd agreement when another character, Ben Budge, clar, ‘We are for a jt partn of the world, for every man hath a right to enjoy life’. In The Beggar’s Opera, Gay mocks the nventns of the Italian operas that were popular among the aristocracy of his day.
Gay’s play is a ballad opera – a popular 18th century genre that f tradnal opera wh broadsheet ballads of the street to tell the stori of the liv of ordary people.