The Beggar's Opera
by Charles R. Rogers
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Bernard Dickerson, David Kelly, Heather Harper, Janet Baker, Roger JeromeDirector: Charles R. Rogers
Brand: Universal Studios
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); German (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Classical, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Restored, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 94 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-07-14
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Decca
Movie Reviews of The Beggar's Opera
Movie Review: Low Life London in the Georgian Age
Summary: 5 Stars
The Beggar's Opera was a "ballad opera" in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay. It's the only example of the once thriving genre of ballad operas that is ever staged today. Ballad operas were comic musical plays that used some of the conventions of Italian opera but with spoken dialogue instead of recitativo. The lyrics were 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 longest run in theatre history up to that time. The original production was so successful that John Rich, the manager of the theatre, was able to build a new theatre, the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, forerunner of the Royal Opera House. In 1920, The Beggar's Opera began an astonishing 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 characters and scenes of Gay's work were the stimulus for "The Threepenny Opera" of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, a modern ballad-opera so popular that it has almost completely displaced the original for the stage.
The original notion of such an opera came from Jonathan Swift, who wrote to Alexander Pope in 1716 asking "...what think you, of a Newgate pastoral among 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. However, before the opening night, John Rich, the theatre director, insisted on having Johann Christoph Pepusch, a composer associated with his theatre, write a formal French overture and also to orchestrate the 69 songs. It's of interest that the circle of gay blades around Pope and Swift also included the young George Frideric Handel, whose Italian operas were precisely what Gay's ballad-opera chose to mock.
A commemorative "score" of the entire opera 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 or accompanying instrumental figures. The absence of the original performing parts has allowed arrangers free creative reign. The tradition of personalized arrangements, dating back at least as far as Thomas Arne's later 18th century arrangements, has continued to the present, running the gamut of musical styles from Romantic to Baroque.
Benjamin Britten's 'arrangement' of 1948 is so original and ample that it really constitutes a 'modern opera' in its own right. It's a brilliant synthesis of 18th C musical manners and formulae with Britten's own distinctively darkling style. Dark and gritty the music is, a quality fully rendered visible in the rags and tatters of this black-and-white filming of a production staged in 1963. Everything blends here - the costumes, the stagecraft, the cinematography - to capture the Hogarthian squalor of gin-sodden lower-class London in the early Hanoverian era. This would be a classic black-and-white film, as 'painterly' as Dickens's Christmas Carol, even without the music. But luckily, the acting cast could also sing! In fact, Polly Peachum is sung by Janet Baker, the finest British opera star of her generation. Lucy Lockit is sung very artfully by Heather Harper and MacHeath is sung by Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar. Both Harper and McKellar were luminaries of the light-opera/operetta stage, and they deliver all the snappy snazzy mannerisms of 'musical comedy' while still singing Britten's incisively jagged disharmonies with 'classical' control. An added surprise: the sound recording is quite good, especially for a film intended for Tv broadcast. In fact, the voices are more 'present' and alive-sounding than on many more recent DVDs of staged operas.
This DVD is included in the six-production box set called the Britten-Pears Collection. Buying the whole set is a good deal more economical than buying the individual releases.
Summary of The Beggar's Opera
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