The Great Trials of World History and the Lessons They Teach Us

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 the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Beggar%27s_Opera

The Beggar’s Opera was last modified: February 15th, 2020 by Jovan Stosic

Ballad opera

Music notes

Jovan Stosic February 15, 2020

The ballad opera is a genre of English stage entertainment that originated in the early 18th century, and continued to develop over the following century and later. Like the earlier comédie en vaudeville and the later Singspiel, its distinguishing characteristic is the use of tunes in a popular style (either pre-existing or newly composed) with spoken dialogue. These English plays were ‘operas‘ mainly insofar as they satirized the conventions of the imported opera seria. Music critic Peter Gammond describes the ballad opera as “an important step in the emancipation of both the musical stage and the popular song.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballad_opera

Ballad opera was last modified: February 15th, 2020 by Jovan Stosic

The Threepenny Opera

Jovan Stosic February 15, 2020

The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) is a “play with music” by Bertolt Brecht, adapted from a translation by Elisabeth Hauptmann of John Gay‘s 18th-century English ballad opera, The Beggar’s Opera, and four ballads by François Villon, with music by Kurt Weill. Although there is debate as to how much, if any, Hauptmann might have contributed to the text, Brecht is usually listed as sole author.

The work offers a socialist critique of the capitalist world. It opened on 31 August 1928 at Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm.

Songs from The Threepenny Opera have been widely covered and become standards, most notably “Die Moritat von Mackie Messer” (“The Ballad of Mack the Knife“) and “Seeräuberjenny” (“Pirate Jenny“).