The Beggar's Opera

The Beggars Opera by John Gay was written in 1728 as a response to the political state in London. Gay moved to London with no expectation of writing a satirical musical. Coming from no money, no title, and no useful contacts he tried to find his own destiny. He took a job as an apprentice to a silk merchant in an attempt to build his status. After realizing that he did not want to pursue a career in silk, he moved on to working in a theater. He was then offered a jobs working for different nobilities

Evaluation of Women and Desire in The Beggar's Opera Though set in the underworld of thievery, John Gay's The Beggar's Opera codifies a set of Marxist sexual politics in which marriage stands as the great equalizer of desire and power. An often aphoristic overview of the traditional power struggle between men and women frames a world in which marriage reduces the wooer's desire but raises his power by an equal degree through ownership as a husband. This commodity fetishism of the wife spurs

John Gay's Use of Music for Satire in The Beggar's Opera John Gay=s The Beggar=s Opera is a rather complex work, despite its apparent simplicity. Critics have interpreted it variously as political satire, moral satire, even (at a stretch) Christian satire. Common to many interpretations is the assertion that the Opera is a satire directed at both the politics and the art of its day. A fairly conventional interpretation of the play and its composition shows

an English playwright during the Augustan period and is best known for his work creating the ballad opera. Pope, Swift, and many other friends of John Gay viewed him and his work with love and respect (“Gay John” 514). According to Latimer, Gay’s work with The Beggar’s Opera “is the first and finest example” of a ballad opera (1). Although Gay’s claim to fame is mainly based on The Beggar’s Opera, he is also well known for his other works which include many poems and he even wrote trivia and songs

just as popular back in the Renaissance as it is today. Much like the definition of opera, musical theater has a definition of a stage performance combining spoken dialogue, acting, dancing and songs written to fit the dialogue being recited. Musicals were a form of entertainment in the late 1600’s when opera began to take popularity in Italy and Germany and England. The use of an orchestra and conductor for opera to accentuate the feeling or the emotion of the piece is something that musical theater

Wrought with double irony and an overall sense of mock-pastoral, English playwright John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera (1728) expresses the ironic dynamic between the central characters Macheath and Peachum. Even the names of the characters comically resemble their occupations within the play, Peachum’s being a play on the word “peach” which means to bring one to trial, while Macheath’s meaning “son of heath” and being a play on the heaths of London, which were prime places for highwaymen (Tillotson

The first thing I am reacting to from The Beggar’s Opera is the cynical view of love. This is particularly prominent in the Peachum family where they claim it is better to be a mistress to a man than to a wife. In addition, throughout the book there is a running gag that the happiest moment a woman has is when she is made a widow because not only is she free from his husband but she is able to have all his property for himself. Personally, I find this hilarious because it is both very close and yet

The Threepenny opera has been around for eighty-eight years and still grabbing the attention of musicians and listeners in general. “Pirate Jenny” is a haunting number that sends chills down your spine, but is this due to the lyrics or the way in which it is sung and produced. This opera is based on a prostitute that has to make difficult decisions; it could be a losing game for her in the end. There are many renditions of this song from other artists such as “Nina Simone” “Steelye Span” and “Ute

Brecht was born in 1898 in Germany, Ausburg. He had gone to Munich then Berlin, in search of a theatrical career, however it soon came to an abrupt halt as Nazis came into power in Germany. Brecht had fled to the USA to seek a better, safer future. Brecht was influenced by a wide range of writers and events, such as Chinese theatre and Karl Marx. The fact that Brecht had been through so much when his homeland got wrecked, gave him a political view to express reality. Epic theatre is where the spectator

character study that the audience is meant to take into their own lives. Threepenny Opera does follow this guideline, though it is most decidedly not a character study. The characters of Threepenny Opera are cruel and shallow, meant to prove a point rather than serve as a vessel for empathy. Three Penny Opera is a show that focuses more on society, a show that wants us to question it and ourselves. Three Penny Opera is an important show for modern audiences to see because the issues that it brings