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57-467: 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

114-447: A "ballad opera". It is plainly much closer to Shield's Rosina than to The Beggar's Opera . In the twentieth century folk singers have produced musical plays with folk or folk-like songs called "ballad operas". Alan Lomax , Pete Seeger , Burl Ives , and others recorded The Martins and the Coys in 1944, and Peter Bellamy and others recorded The Transports in 1977. The first of these

171-555: A Highwayman, sufficiently discover the mischievous Design of it; since by this Character every Body will understand One, who makes it his Business arbitrarily to levy and collect Money on the People for his own Use, and of which he always dreads to give an Account – Is not this squinting with a vengeance, and wounding Persons in Authority through the Sides of a common Malefactor? The commentator notes

228-616: A boy, and after many adventures marries the son of a Carib chief. The political satire, however, was even more pointed in Polly than in The Beggar's Opera , with the result that Prime Minister Robert Walpole leaned on the Lord Chamberlain to have it banned, and it was not performed until fifty years later. As was typical practice of the time in London, a commemorative "score" of the entire opera

285-474: A broad scale, primarily through the comparison of low-class thieves and whores with their aristocratic and bourgeois "betters." The airs of The Beggar's Opera in part allude to well-known popular ballads, and Gay's lyrics sometimes play with their wording in order to amuse and entertain the audience. Gay used Scottish folk melodies mostly taken from the poet Allan Ramsay 's hugely popular collection The Gentle Shepherd (1725) plus two French tunes (including

342-571: A brother, Daniel Duval. At the age of 14 he was sent to Paris where he worked as a domestic servant . He later became a stable boy for a group of English royalists and moved to England in the time of the English Restoration as a footman of the Duke of Richmond (possibly a relation) and rented a house in Wokingham . The legend goes that before long, Duval became a successful highwayman who robbed

399-455: A composer associated with his theatre, write a formal French overture (based on two of the songs in the opera, including a fugue based on Lucy's 3rd act song "I'm Like A Skiff on the Ocean Toss'd") and also to arrange the 69 songs. Although there is no external evidence of who the arranger was, inspection of the original 1729 score, formally published by Dover Books , demonstrates that Pepusch

456-520: A few months later. Shortly afterwards, he is said to have been arrested in the Hole-in-the-Wall tavern in London's Chandos Street , Covent Garden . On 17 January 1670, judge Sir William Morton found him guilty of six robberies (others remained unproven) and sentenced him to death. Despite many attempts to intercede, the King did not pardon him and he was executed on 21 January at Tyburn . When his body

513-506: A greatly refined form) of the original ballad opera can be found in Gilbert's contribution to the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan , and the more pastoral form of ballad opera is satirised in one of Gilbert and Sullivan's early works, The Sorcerer (1877). The Threepenny Opera of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht (1928) is a reworking of The Beggar's Opera , setting a similar story with

570-476: A hero and an anti-hero. Harold Gene Moss, arguing that Macheath is a noble character, has written, "[one] whose drives are toward love and the vital passions, Macheath becomes an almost Christ-like victim of the decadence surrounding him." Contrarily, John Richardson in the peer-reviewed journal Eighteenth-Century Life has argued that Macheath is powerful as a literary figure precisely because he stands against any interpretation, "against expectation and illusion." He

627-400: A part of his potential loot from a gentleman, when the man's wife agreed to dance the "courante" with him in the wayside, a scene immortalised by William Powell Frith in his 1860 painting Claude Duval . If his intention was to deter pursuit by his non-threatening behaviour, he did not totally succeed. After the authorities promised a large reward, he fled to France for some time but returned

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684-587: A popular ballad opera, The Devil to Pay , by Charles Coffey . This was successfully performed in Hamburg , Leipzig and elsewhere in Germany in the 1740s. A new version was produced by C. F. Weisse and Johann Adam Hiller in 1766. The success of this version was the first of many by these collaborators, who have been called (according to Grove ) "the fathers of the German Singspiel". (The storyline of The Devil to Pay

741-466: A reactionary call for libertarian values in response to the growing power of the Whig party. It may also have been influenced by the then-popular ideology of John Locke that men should be allowed their natural liberties; these democratic strains of thought influenced the populist movements of the time, of which The Beggar's Opera was a part. The character of Macheath has been considered by critics as both

798-457: A tavern where he is surrounded by women of dubious virtue who, despite their class, compete in displaying perfect drawing-room manners, although the subject of their conversation is their success in picking pockets and shoplifting. Macheath discovers, too late, that two of them (Jenny Diver, Suky Tawdry) have contracted with Peachum to capture him, and he becomes a prisoner in Newgate prison. The prison

855-416: A translation into German by Elisabeth Hauptmann ) adapted the work into Die Dreigroschenoper ( The Threepenny Opera ) in 1928, sticking closely to the original plot and characters but with a new libretto, and mostly new music by Kurt Weill . 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

912-488: Is in some ways connected to the "pastoral" form of the ballad opera, and the latter to the satiric Beggar's Opera type, but in all they represent yet further reinterpretations of the term. Ironically, it is in the musicals of Kander and Ebb —especially Chicago and Cabaret —that the kind of satire embodied in The Beggar's Opera and its immediate successors is probably best preserved, although here, as in Weill's version,

969-636: Is now thought to have been modeled on the gentleman highwayman, Claude Duval, although interest in criminals had recently been raised by Jack Sheppard's escapes from Newgate . The Beggar's Opera has had an influence on all later British stage comedies, especially on nineteenth century British comic opera and the modern musical. Peachum, a fence and thief-catcher, justifies his actions. Mrs Peachum, overhearing her husband's blacklisting of unproductive thieves, protests regarding one of them: Bob Booty (the nickname of Robert Walpole ). The Peachums discover that Polly, their daughter, has secretly married Macheath,

1026-514: Is ready to be hanged. The narrator (the Beggar), notes that although in a properly moral ending Macheath and the other villains would be hanged, the audience demands a happy ending, and so Macheath is reprieved, and all are invited to a dance of celebration, to celebrate his wedding to Polly. The Beggar's Opera was met with widely varying reactions. Its popularity was documented in The Craftsman with

1083-560: Is recaptured and hanged, his fortune might be subject to Peachum's claims. Lockit and Peachum discover Macheath's hiding place. They decide to split his fortune. Meanwhile, Polly visits Lucy to try to reach an agreement, but Lucy tries to poison her. Polly narrowly avoids the poisoned drink, and the two girls find out that Macheath has been recaptured owing to the inebriated Mrs Diana Trapes. They plead with their fathers for Macheath's life. However, Macheath now finds that four more pregnant women each claim him as their husband. He declares that he

1140-613: Is reported to haunt the Holt Hotel along the A4260 (Oxford Road) in Oxfordshire, a hotel where he spent many nights when it was a small coaching inn. Recent historians have reappraised the legacy of Duval. James Sharpe in Dick Turpin regarded Duval as the most significant figure in the shaping of the highwayman myth. John and Philip Sugden's The Thief of Hearts reconstructs what is known of

1197-503: Is run by Peachum's associate, the corrupt jailer Lockit. His daughter, Lucy Lockit, has the opportunity to scold Macheath for having agreed to marry her and then broken this promise. She tells him that to see him tortured would give her pleasure. Macheath pacifies her, but Polly arrives and claims him as her husband. Macheath tells Lucy that Polly is crazy. Lucy helps Macheath to escape by stealing her father's keys. Her father learns of Macheath's promise to marry her and worries that if Macheath

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1254-544: The Beggar's last remark: "That the lower People have their Vices in a Degree as well as the Rich, and are punished for them," implying that rich People are not so punished. Criticism of Gay's opera continued long after its publication. In 1776, John Hawkins wrote in his History of Music that due to the opera's popularity, "Rapine and violence have been gradually increasing" solely because the rising generation of young men desired to imitate

1311-554: The Days of My Youth", in which the "fa la la chorus is written as "viol."; and the final reprieve dance, Macheath's "Thus I Stand Like A Turk", which includes two sections of 16 measures of "dance" marked "viol." (See the 1729 score, formerly published by Dover). The absence of the original performing parts has allowed producers and arrangers free rein. The tradition of personalised arrangements, dating back at least as far as Thomas Arne 's later 18th century arrangements, continues today, running

1368-535: The Italian opera style and the English public's fascination with it." Instead of the grand music and themes of opera, the work uses familiar tunes and characters that were ordinary people. Some of the songs were by opera composers like Handel , but only the most popular of these were used. The audience could hum along with the music and identify with the characters. The story satirised politics, poverty and injustice, focusing on

1425-621: The Modern Gentleman in the Eighteenth Century Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2009. ISBN   978-1-4214-1385-3 Sharpe, James. Dick Turpin: The Myth of the English highwayman . London: Profile, 2005. ISBN   978-1861974-181 . Sugden, John. 'The Merry Dance of the Highwayman', History Today , March 2017, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 48–52. Sugden, John and Philip. The Thief of Hearts: Claude Duval and

1482-727: The Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn Fields with general Applause, to the great Mortification of the Performers and Admirers of the Outlandish Opera in the Haymarket." (17 February 1728) Two weeks after opening night, an article appeared in The Craftsman , the leading opposition newspaper, ostensibly protesting at Gay's work as libellous and ironically assisting him in satirising the Walpole establishment by taking

1539-592: The airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time. The Beggar's Opera premiered at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre on 29 January 1728 and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the second-longest run in theatre history up to that time (after 146 performances of Robert Cambert 's Pomone in Paris in 1671). The work became Gay's greatest success and has been played ever since; it has been called "the most popular play of

1596-428: The burlesques and musical plays of Thomas D'Urfey (1653–1723) who had a reputation for fitting new words to existing songs ; a popular anthology of these settings was published in 1700 and frequently re-issued. A number of the tunes from this anthology were recycled in The Beggar's Opera . After the success of The Beggar's Opera , many similar pieces were staged. The actor Thomas Walker , who played Macheath in

1653-448: The carol " Quelle est cette odeur agréable? " for his song "Fill Every Glass"), to serve his hilariously pointed and irreverent texts. Macheath's satire on modern society ("The modes of the court so common are grown") is also sung to Henry Purcell's Lillibullero . Pepusch composed an overture and arranged all the tunes shortly before the opening night at Lincoln's Inn Fields on 28 January 1728. However, all that remains of Pepusch's score are

1710-505: The character Macheath. Hawkins blamed Gay for tempting these men with "the charms of idleness and criminal pleasure," which Hawkins saw Macheath as representing and glorifying. In 1729, Gay wrote a sequel, Polly , set in the West Indies : Macheath, sentenced to transportation, has escaped and become a pirate, while Mrs Trapes has set up in white-slaving and shanghais Polly to sell her to the wealthy planter Mr Ducat. Polly escapes dressed as

1767-414: The dialogue and plot so that there are surprises in each of the forty-five fast-paced scenes and 68 short songs. The success of the opera was accompanied by a public desire for keepsakes and mementos, ranging from images of Polly on fans and clothing, playing cards and fire-screens, broadsides featuring all the characters, and the rapidly published musical score of the opera. The play is sometimes seen to be

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1824-595: The eighteenth century". In 1920, The Beggar's Opera began a revival run of 1,463 performances at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith , London, which was one of the longest runs in history for any piece of musical theatre at that time. The piece satirised Italian opera , which had become popular in London. According to The New York Times : "Gay wrote the work more as an anti-opera than an opera, one of its attractions to its 18th-century London public being its lampooning of

1881-550: The famous highwayman , who is Peachum's principal client. Upset to learn they will no longer be able to use Polly in their business, Peachum and his wife ask how Polly will support such a husband "in Gaming, Drinking and Whoring." Nevertheless, they conclude that the match may be more profitable to the Peachums if the husband can be killed for his money. They leave to carry out this errand. However, Polly has hidden Macheath. Macheath goes to

1938-678: The flow of the story, which involves lower class, often criminal, characters, and typically shows a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period. It is generally accepted that the first ballad opera, and the one that was to prove the most successful, was The Beggar's Opera of 1728. It had a libretto by John Gay and music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch , both of whom probably experienced vaudeville theatre in Paris , and may have been motivated to reproduce it in an English form. They were also probably influenced by

1995-503: The following entries: "This Week a Dramatick Entertainment has been exhibited at the Theatre in Lincoln's-Inn-Fields, entitled The Beggar's Opera, which has met with a general Applause, insomuch that the Waggs say it has made Rich very Gay, and probably will make Gay very Rich." (3 February 1728) "We hear that the British Opera, commonly called The Beggar's Opera , continues to be acted, at

2052-469: The gamut of musical styles from Romantic to Baroque: Austin, Britten , Sargent , Bonynge , Dobin and other conductors have each imbued the songs with a personal stamp, highlighting different aspects of characterisation. The hornpipe tune to which Nancy Dawson danced between acts in The Beggar's Opera in the mid-1700s is now used for " Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush ". Following is a list of some of

2109-449: The government's side: It will, I know, be said, by these libertine Stage-Players, that the Satire is general; and that it discovers a Consciousness of Guilt for any particular Man to apply it to Himself. But they seem to forget that there are such things as Innuendo 's (a never-failing Method of explaining Libels)… Nay the very Title of this Piece and the principal Character, which is that of

2166-463: The historical Duval, using much fresh evidence, and shows that the traditions about the Frenchman were used by such literary luminaries as Samuel Butler ( A Pindarick Ode ), John Gay ( The Beggar's Opera ) and William Harrison Ainsworth ( Rookwood and Talbot Harland ) to create the iconic image of the gentleman highwayman still beloved today. Mackie, Erin. Rakes, Highwaymen, and Pirates. The Making of

2223-416: The innumerable works of Charles Dibdin moved the balance back towards the original style, but there was little remaining of the impetus of the satirical ballad opera. English 19th century opera is very heavily drawn from the "pastoral" form of the ballad opera, and traces even of the satiric kind can be found in the work of "serious" practitioners such as John Barnett . Much of the satiric spirit (albeit in

2280-545: The lower reaches of society, the audiences for these works were typically the London bourgeois. As a reaction to opera seria (at this time almost invariably sung in Italian), the music, for these audiences, was as satirical in its way as the words of the play. The plays themselves contained references to contemporary politics—in The Beggar's Opera the character Peachum was a lampoon of Sir Robert Walpole . This satirical element meant that many of them risked censorship and banning—as

2337-401: The main of original music, although they not infrequently quoted folk melodies, or imitated them. Thomas Arne and Isaac Bickerstaffe 's Love in a Village , and William Shield 's Rosina (1781) are typical examples. Many of these works were introduced as after-pieces to performances of Italian operas. Later in the century broader comedies such as Richard Brinsley Sheridan 's The Duenna and

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2394-424: The most highly regarded 20th-century arrangements and settings of the opera. Ballad opera Ballad opera has been called an "eighteenth-century protest against the Italian conquest of the London operatic scene." It consists of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short (mostly a single short stanza and refrain) to minimize disruptions to

2451-556: The music is specially composed, unlike the first ballad operas of the 18th century. Claude Duval Claude Du Vall (or Duval) (c. 1643 – 21 January 1670) was a French highwayman in Restoration England . He worked in the service of exiled royalists who returned to England under King Charles II . Little else is known of his history. According to popular legend, he abhorred violence, showing courtesy to his victims and chivalry to their womenfolk, thus spawning

2508-415: The music was drawn was the fund of popular airs to which 18th century London broadside ballads are set. It is from this connection that the term "ballad opera" is drawn. This ragbag of familiar music is a good test for distinguishing between the original type of ballad opera and its later forms. Many ballad operas used the same tunes, such as " Lillibullero ", and by about 1750 it had become clear that there

2565-456: The myth of the romantic highwayman, as taken up by many novelists and playwrights. Per one account, Claude Duval was born in Domfront, Orne , Normandy in about 1643 to Pierre Duval, a miller, and Marguerite, daughter of a tailor. A 'family fable suggested' they were once 'landed lords, but there was little evidence left to show for it'. His origin and parentage are in dispute. He did, however, have

2622-447: The original production, wrote several ballad operas, and Gay produced further works in this style, including a much less successful sequel, Polly . Henry Fielding , Colley Cibber , Charles Coffey , Thomas Arne , Charles Dibdin , Arnold, Shield, Jackson of Exeter, Hook and many others produced ballad operas that enjoyed great popularity. By the middle of the century, however, the genre was already in decline. Although they featured

2679-404: The overture (with complete instrumentation) and the melodies of the songs without figured basses . Various reconstructions have been attempted, and a 1990 reconstruction of the score by American composer Jonathan Dobin has been used in a number of modern productions. Gay uses the operatic norm of three acts (as opposed to the standard in spoken drama of the time of five acts), and tightly controls

2736-608: The passing stagecoaches on the roads to London, especially Holloway between Highgate and Islington and, that unlike most other highwaymen, he distinguished himself with rather gentlemanly behaviour and fashionable clothes. He reputedly never used violence. One of his victims was Squire Roper, Master of the Royal Buckhounds, whom he relieved of 50 guineas and tied to a tree. There are many tales about Duval. A particularly famous one – placed in more than one location and later published by William Pope – claims that he took only

2793-465: The same characters, and containing much of the same satirical bite. On the other hand, it uses just one tune from the original—all the other music being specially composed, and thus omits one of the most distinctive features of the original ballad opera. In a completely different vein, Hugh the Drover , an opera in two acts by Ralph Vaughan Williams first staged in 1924, is also sometimes referred to as

2850-418: The theme of corruption at all levels of society. Lavinia Fenton , the first Polly Peachum, became an overnight success. Her pictures were in great demand, verses were written to her and books published about her. After appearing in several comedies, and then in numerous repetitions of The Beggar's Opera , she ran away with her married lover, Charles Powlett, 3rd Duke of Bolton . Bertolt Brecht (working from

2907-409: 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. However, a week or so before the opening night, John Rich , the theatre director, insisted on having Johann Christoph Pepusch ,

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2964-605: Was a need for new tunes to be written. In 1762, Thomas Arne's Love in a Village presented a new form of ballad opera, with mainly new music and much less reliance on traditional tunes. It was followed in similar style by Charles Dibdin's Lionel and Clarissa in 1768. The Disappointment (1762) represents an early American attempt at such a ballad opera. In 1736 the Prussian ambassador in England commissioned an arrangement in German of

3021-403: Was also adapted for Gluck for his 1759 French opera Le diable à quatre ). A later development, also often referred to as ballad opera, was a more "pastoral" form. In subject matter, especially, these "ballad operas" were antithetical to the more satirical variety. In place of the rag-bag of pre-existing music found in (for example) The Beggar's Opera , the scores of these works consisted in

3078-409: Was assembled and published quickly. As was common, this consisted of the fully arranged overture followed by the melodies of the 69 songs, supported by only the simplest bass accompaniments. There are no indications of dance music, accompanying instrumental figures or the like, except in three instances: Lucy's "Is Then His Fate Decree'd Sir" – one measure of descending scale marked "Viol." –; Trape's "In

3135-573: Was cut down and exhibited in Tangier Tavern, it drew a large crowd. It is traditionally thought Duval was buried under the centre aisle of the church of St Paul's, Covent Garden ; the parish register notes the burial of a "Peter Duval" in January 1670. A memorial at the church reads: The apparently gallant highwayman inspired a number of biographers and playwrights to add to his legend , including claims of alchemy , gambling, and much womanising. He

3192-408: Was the arranger. The work took satiric aim at the passionate interest of the upper classes in Italian opera, and simultaneously set out to lampoon the notable Whig statesman Robert Walpole , and politicians in general, as well as such notorious criminals as Jonathan Wild , the thief-taker, Claude Duval , the highwayman, and Jack Sheppard , the prison-breaker. It also deals with social inequity on

3249-418: Was the case with Gay's successor to The Beggar's Opera , Polly . The tunes of the original ballad operas were almost all pre-existing (somewhat in the manner of a modern " jukebox musical "): however they were taken from a wide variety of contemporary sources, including folk melodies , popular airs by classical composers (such as Purcell ) and even children's nursery rhymes . A significant source from which

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