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
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THE BEGGAR’S OPERA BY JOHN GAY
* 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. 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.
BIOGRAPHY OF JOHN GAY
Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill based their ballad opera Die Dreigroschenoper (1928; The Threepenny Opera) on Gay’s work. None of s ial proponents, least of all s thor John Gay, anticipated this legacy.
When and why did Gay wre The Beggar’s Opera?
THE BEGGAR'S OPERA BY JOHN GAY
Gay wrote the The Beggar’s Opera to needle placent high-end nsumers.
Opera seria is the foil to Gay’s work, which like s target featur warrg divas, sie arias, an overture, three acts, a prison scene and a happy endg. But Gay thst the actn of The Beggar’s Opera ep to London’s unrworld. Most importantly, song exists The Beggar’s Opera not to climax affectively but to school listeners social did Gay's characters The Beggar’s Opera e om?
Gay drew his characters om real-life crimals. Gay took the name of Jenny Diver, who betrays Macheath, om London’s most famo pickpocket. To this Gay add ad homem attacks: Macheath and Peachum were alternately stand-s for First Mister Robert Walpole, whose nickname ‘Great Man’ is also Macheath’s.