The Beggar's Opera

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Work data
Original title: The Beggar's Opera
Original language: English
Music: Johann Christoph Pepusch
Libretto : John Gay
Premiere: 1728
Place of premiere: Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater , London
people
  • Mr. Peachum
  • Lockit
  • Macheath
  • Filch
  • Beggar
  • Player
  • Mrs. Peachum
  • Polly Peachum
  • Lucy Lockit
  • Diana Trapes

Macheath's gang:

  • Jemmy Twitcher
  • Crook-Finger'd Jack
  • Wat Dreary
  • Robin of Bagshot
  • Nimming Ned
  • Harry Padington
  • Matt of the Mint
  • Ben Budge

City women:

  • Mrs. Coaxer
  • Dolly Trull
  • Mrs. Vixen
  • Betty Doxy
  • Jenny Diver
  • Mrs. Slammekin
  • Sukey Tawdrey
  • Molly Brazen

The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera by John Gay (text) and Johann Christoph Pepusch (music), premiered in 1728 at Lincoln’s Inn Fields Theater in London . She established Gays rank as one of the most important writers of the Augustan Age .

Action sketch

Beggar's Opera painting , Scene V, by William Hogarth , c. 1728

At the beginning a beggar appears and assures an actor that it is actually an opera, although not everything is "unnatural" in it and the prologue , epilogue and recitatives are missing.

Act I (13 scenes)

Peachum is a kind of private policeman who works as a thief -taker on a commission basis for the judiciary, but at the same time sells stolen goods as a stolen goods. He complains to his follower Filch about his gang of thieves, robbers and cardsharps who sell too little goods or money. In conversation, Peachum learns about the relationship between his inexperienced and romantically inclined daughter Polly and the highwayman and womanizer Macheath. Mr. and Mrs. Peachum are appalled to hear that Polly is already married to him and decide that she should be widowed as sole heir as soon as possible so that they can collect the bounty for Macheath. Peachum intends to kill Macheath. Polly wants to warn him and help him escape.

Act II (15 scenes)

Some gangsters are planning the next coup, Macheath comes along. Two whores, Jenny and Suki, betray him to Mr. Peachum, who arrests him. The whores fight over the reward, and MacHeath buys lighter handcuffs in Newgate Prison . One of his many wives, Lucy, the daughter of the prison guard Lockit, visits him. Just as Polly infatuated MacHeath, the courtly language dominates and understands flattery, Lucy and she wants to marry. Lockit and Peachum fight over the bounty for Macheath. Both have no clean slate and are forced to work together. Lucy can't persuade her father to release MacHeath. Polly visits Macheath and argues with her rival Lucy. Peachum brings Polly home. Lucy steals the cell key and helps Macheath escape.

III. Nude (17 scenes)

Lockit, who finds out about his daughter, is appalled by her and wants to convince himself that Peachum did not help Macheath too. During an encounter with Peachum, he accidentally learns of Mrs. Trapes Macheath's whereabouts: a gambling den. To get him back, Lockit and Peachum want to cooperate. Polly is now also planning a collaboration - with Lucy to save Macheath. Lucy, however, wants to poison Polly, but Polly refuses to drink the poison. In the meantime, Macheath is locked up again. The two women plead with their fathers to save the arrested man from the death penalty. At the end, four other lovers of his appear. Standing on the gallows, he finally wants to be hanged. The beggar reappears and insists on an execution. Macheath is acquitted out of consideration for the audience, who demand a happy ending .

Emergence

In 1716, Jonathan Swift wrote a letter to Alexander Pope who urged a pastoral drama to be staged in Newgate Prison in London. Gay, who lost much of his fortune during the South Sea Bubble in 1720, was forced to write tirelessly. However, his pieces were unsuccessful. This fate already shared the parodic farce The What D'Ye Call It , composed in 1715 , in which he found his typical style and which anticipated the characteristics of the later Beggar's Opera as a mixture of genres and radical theatrical satire. In 1727 he began work on his famous Ballad Opera . Critics and friends were pessimistic about the upcoming audience response. Colley Cibber , Impresario of the Theater Royal Drury Lane , rejected the manuscript because he feared censorship problems due to the political explosiveness of the text . After the Duchess of Queensberry , wife of Charles Douglas, 3rd Duke of Queensberry , pledged financial support, John Rich , founder and director of Lincoln's Inn Fields Theater, decided to premiere the play on January 29, 1728.

Effect and meaning

Political content

As a social satire that ironicized both higher and lower classes and had an equally sentimental and anti-romantic effect, it thrilled the audience, but also alarmed the censors. For example, the Lord Great Chamberlain, concerned about the reputation of court and government , had the sequel Polly (1729) named after the most popular figure banned. Gay's realistic view is evident in the depiction of social developments at the time - impoverishment as a result of population growth, crime, prostitution , alcoholism, especially through gin consumption - and in amusing allusions to contemporary theater:

  • At the beginning, a beggar thanks an actor for the fact that his drama is no longer performed by laypeople but by professional actors.
  • His assurance that neither of the two main female roles has been disadvantaged refers to the prima donna dispute between Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni in 1727, which is matched in the dispute between Polly and Lucy.
  • Filch goes on a thief tour where it's worth it: in front of the theaters.
  • Reading romance novels gives Polly completely naive ideas about marriage.

With the figure of Peachum, which is based on the most famous English criminal of the 18th century Jonathan Wild , the British Prime Minister Robert Walpole was caricatured at the same time . Gay, staunch Tory and victim of the South Sea Bubble, believed the Whig politician to be the cause of the financial and economic upheaval after 1720. The characters Macheath and Robin (Robert) of Bagshot, "alias Bluff Bob, alias Bob Booty", also wear Walpole's features . After a long affair, he married his lover Molly Skerritt , whose name is reflected in the characters Polly Peachum and Lucy Lockit.

Establishment of the Ballad Opera

The English-language alternative to the bombastic Italian Singspiel , which - even in its title - caricatured the high opera dominated by Georg Friedrich Handel , was performed 62 times in a row under John Rich's aegis . In the next five years, 22 music dramas based on it were created. The success of the Ballad Opera over the Opera seria contributed significantly to the economic decline of the Royal Academy of Music and of Handel as an opera composer.

The composer Johann Christoph Pepusch , whom Gay had met through John Rich, took the themes of the 69 music numbers ( airs ), which correspond to the moods of the actors, from popular arias and chants. Of these, 23 came from England and 46 from abroad. Pepusch himself composed only the overture , which takes up two melodies, and one song. Only the harmonization as a figured bass line of the melodies remained (from the 3rd edition of the opera from 1729); The score and individual parts are lost.

In contrast to Italian arias, the opera audience no longer had to overcome a language barrier. This contributed to the popularization as well as the selection of excellent singing voices. Lavinia Fenton , later wife of the Duke of Bolton , became a star in the role of Polly . By the end of the century there were more than a thousand performances, and in the New World was The Beggar's Opera for an example of musicals . In strict Victorianism , it disappeared from the repertoire.

Recent performances and adaptations

At the beginning of the 20th century, Frederic Austin restored the work and made it performable again with additional music of his own. He also played the role of Peachum in the successful revivals that began in London's Lyric Theater in 1920, directed by Nigel Playfair . The German translation of the piece by Elisabeth Hauptmann served Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill in 1928 as the basis of their Threepenny Opera . In October 1934, Brecht shifted the plot of his threepenny novel into the milieu of a hypocritical business world, and in the new version of the opera, on which he worked between 1946 and 1949, Brecht adapted the material to the situation after the end of the war . Benjamin Britten's arrangement, which was first performed in 1948, is more faithful to the work. In 1978, the opera was the basis for the Galoschenoper of Reiner Bredemeyer . This was followed by dramatic and partly purely musical adaptations of:

Film adaptations

German title

As Bertolt Brecht noted, the title is often misleading in German:

“'The Beggar's Opera' was first performed in 1728 at the Lincoln's Inn Theater. The title does not mean, as some German translators believed: 'Die Bettleroper', that is, an opera in which beggars appear, but rather: 'Des Bettlers Oper', that is, an opera for beggars. 'The Beggar's Opera' was a Handel travesty and was written at the suggestion of Jonathan Swift. "

literature

Web links

Commons : The Beggar's Opera  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ John Rich (producer) in the English language Wikipedia
  2. ↑ Maria, Lady Walpole in the English language Wikipedia
  3. ↑ Lavinia Fenton in the English language Wikipedia

Individual evidence

Eichmann 2001

  1. ↑ a b c Eichmann 2001
  2. ↑ "impeaching" stands for collecting bounty, which refers to Wild's double life - gang leader and " top thief catcher ".

Alexander Eilers: John Gay: Life and Work . In: Eilers 2010, pp. 6-8

  1. ↑ a b p. 7
  2. ↑ p. 8

Sandy Ackermann: On the origin and reception history of the Beggar's Opera . In: Eilers 2010, pp. 9–13

  1. ↑ a b p. 9
  2. ↑ p. 10
  3. ↑ a b c p. 12
  4. ↑ a b p. 11
  5. ↑ a b c p. 13

Bettina Sauter: Politics and Social Reality in the Augustan Age . In: Eilers 2010, pp. 14-18

  1. ↑ pp. 16-18
  2. ↑ p. 16

Sergej Gil: John Gay's humorous talent - The Beggar's Opera as a comedy . In: Eilers 2010, pp. 19-23

  1. ↑ p. 23
  2. ↑ p. 20
  3. ↑ p. 19

Alexander Eilers: The ballad opera through the ages . In: Eilers 2010, pp. 24–30

  1. ↑ a b p. 24
  2. ↑ a b c d p. 25
  3. ↑ p. 26 f.
  4. ↑ p. 27
  5. ↑ p. 28 f.
  6. ↑ p. 30.

Michaela Karl: 'From old to new' - modern theater adaptations by Beggar's Opera . In: Eilers 2010, pp. 31–36

  1. ↑ p. 31
  2. ↑ a b p. 35
  3. ↑ p. 35 f.

Other documents:

  1. ↑ JLU Gießen: program booklet 2010, p. 4
  2. ^ "I hope I may be forgiven, that I have not made my Opera throughout unnatural, like those in vogue; for I have no recitative; excepting this, as I have consented to have neither Prologue nor Epilogue, it must be allowed an Opera in all its Forms. "In: Bear 1992, p. 8
  3. ↑ Mac (Scottish) stands for "the son of / who" and heath (English) means "heath" (= main scene of the robberies).
  4. ↑ Jeremy Barlow in: Booklet for The Beggar's Opera , p. 7 ff., CD published by harmonia mundi 2003
  5. ^ Bertolt Brecht: Writings on the theater. Volume 2 . Suhrkamp, ​​p. 107