The Beggar's Opera

A receiver of stolen goods informs on his chief supplier, setting in motion an increasingly absurd turn of events that climaxes in a parody of 18th-century England's passion for sentimental tragedy. In addition to its burlesque of the then-current vogue for Italian operatic styles, this satirical 1728 play ridicules a broad spectrum of political figures and social conventions, depicting crime and vice at every level of society. Influential prototype for Threepenny Opera.