At its London premiere in 1728, John Gay's rollicking Beggar's Opera caused a sensation. Lampooning the politics and public morality of the day, it became an instant hit. Get The Beggar's Opera Email ...

The swankest of the arts in 18th-Century London was Italian opera. Periwigged courtiers, who could not understand a word of it, raised their lace cuffs to applaud the ornate trilling of swivel-voiced ...

The work is also a satire on the opera-going tradition of the time: instead of using the grandiose characters of Handelian opera – kings, princes magicians - Gay has made the entire cast of characters ...

Who would have thought an 18th-century comic opera, rooted in the political climate and musical tastes of its time, would still be going strong today, produced by a South African company whose ...

A huge success at its first performance in 1728 John Gay's The Beggar's Opera satirized the conventions of Italian opera, using popular tunes to tell the story of rogues and criminals. With his ...

Mr. Iturbi having completed his Stadium duties for the season, we now have Mr. Ormandy directing the Philharmonic - Symphony nightly except for Fridays and Saturdays, when Mr. Smallens takes charge of ...

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John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera is a uniquely important and remarkable piece of British theatre: the first of a new genre, the ballad opera, in 1728, that was killed off with the advent of the Lord ...

At first glance John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, with its exploration of the lower classes and its emphasis on entertainment, would seem ideal fare for a long, balmy summers evening in the outdoors. It ...

The Beggar's Opera is one of the earliest examples of a Musical in the history of theater (from which Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill drew inspiration for the Threepenny Opera). A crowd of thieves and ...