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A satire that shook the foundationsof musical entertainmentThe Beggar’s Opera is set in London in the 1720s, a place whereevery other property was a grog (gin) shop, some offering “pennydrunk or tuppence dead drunk and straw to lie on!” Crime was rife,especially pickpocketing.There being no middle class, the upper class musicalentertainment of the day was Italian opera with its bevy of starsingers and adoring followers and highly ornamented vocal lines,which were calculated to show off the talent of the performers.John Gay produced The Beggar’s Opera as a satire aimed at theupper classes and their fascination with Italian opera,simultaneously setting out to lampoon the notable Whig statesmanRobert Walpole (alias Bob Booty) as well as other politicians andnotorious criminals of the day.It will not escape the listener that the piece deals with the vastsocial inequality of the times. Instead of the recitatives and arias ofItalian opera, Gay used folk melodies taken from a collection of1725, The Gentle Shepherd, as well as French carol tunes andpopular melodies by Handel.At the first performance, at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theatre inJanuary 1728, these were intended to be sung withoutaccompaniment; however, a week before the opening night, thetheatre manager, John Rich, insisted that the composer, JohannChristoph Pepusch, write an overture in the French style andarrange the 69 songs with accompaniment.It ran for an historic 62 consecutive performances – the longestin that theatre’s history. It also fatally undermined the Italian operaof Handel, which went into sharp decline from 1729 onwards.Lent 2013 The LINK9