The Beggar's Opera

by John Gay

Overview

The Beggar's Opera is the only ballad opera that is still popularly performed today. A ballad opera is a satirical musical, which uses the form of an opera but incorporates popular songs and ballads as well as operatic numbers. The Beggar's Opera satirizes the corruption to be found in all levels of society. Its immense popularity provided funds for the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, to be built and also catapulted its leading lady to fame. It has continued to be performed ever since its premier in 1728.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781775414919
Publisher:	The Floating Press
Publication date:	04/01/2009
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	121 KB

About the Author

David Lindley is Professor of Renaissance Literature at Leeds University. He is the author of Shakespeare and Music in the Arden Critical Companions Series and editor of The Tempest for the New Cambridge Shakespeare series.


Vivien Jones is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Gender and Culture at Leeds University. She has edited Evelina and Jane Austen: Selected Letters for Oxford World's Classics and has written widely on women in the eighteenth century.

Editorial Reviews

...with Ilona Sekacz's complete musical overhaul, [Caird] raises the dramatic fever of the score to match Gay's wonderfully savage and scabrous script.

Observer (London)

Fresh as milk, horny as hell, a dream, a nightmare, a cross-section of an ant hill, John Gay's BEGGAR'S OPERA is like life. It is beautiful, it is there, and it goes on. And, in John Caird's sensationally seductive production you never want it to end...Here's variety before the word was invented.

Midweek Magazine

THE BEGGAR'S OPERA...is obviously full of zest and fascination...There is so much life and vigour in the whole thing...It was absolutely spell-binding...

Oxford Magazine

Offers a useful performance history of the satirical ballad-opera...the New Mermaids [edition] includes music as well as words for the songs.” —Plays International

From the Publisher

Offers a useful performance history of the satirical ballad-opera...the New Mermaids [edition] includes music as well as words for the songs.

Plays International