About the Book
Beggar's Opera [1728]
The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay. 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 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[1] and ran for 62 consecutive performances, the longest run in theatre history up to that time.[2] The work became Gay's greatest success and has been played ever since. 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.[3] 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.
About the Author
John Gay, 1685-1732
Poet and dramatist, born near Barnstaple of a good but decayed family. His parents dying while he was a child he was apprenticed to a silk-mercer in London, but not liking the trade, was released by his master. In 1708 he published a poem, Wine, and in 1713 Rural Sports, which he dedicated to Pope, whose friendship he obtained. A little before this he had received an appointment as secretary in the household of the Duchess of Monmouth. His next attempts were in the drama, in which he was not at first successful; but about 1714 he made his first decided hit in The Shepherd’s Week, a set of six pastorals designed to satirise Ambrose Philips, which, however, secured public approval on their own merits. These were followed by Trivia [1716], in which he was aided by Swift, an account in mock heroic verse of the dangers of the London streets, and by The Fan.
The last few years of his life were passed in the household of the Duke of Queensberry, who had always been his friend and patron. He died after three days’ illness, aged 47. Gay was an amiable, easy-going man, who appears to have had the power of attracting the strong attachments of his friends, among whom were Pope and Swift. He seems to have been one of the very few for whom the latter had a sincere affection. He is buried in Westminster Abbey. Of all he has written he is best remembered by one or two songs, of which the finest is Black-eyed Susan.
