The Beggar's Opera

influenced by the Italian style, with much of his vocal work being written in Italian, including all of his operas, countless arias and many of his early oratorios. However, after the release of the satirical Beggar’s Opera, by John Gay, in early 1728, the popularity of Italian Opera began to decline, because Gay’s work’s prevalent theme ridiculed the stereotypical plots in Italian opera. English audiences were also growing ever more dissatisfied with their entertainment being in Italian, a language

were already important musical alternatives to opera by the mid-seventeenth century, but differed in nearly every respect from the genres of the same names found in the early eighteenth century. As genres late in the period, they both bespoke the traditions from which they originally sprang and permitted new recombination of the musical elements of these same traditions. The oratorio and cantata of the eighteenth century were both linked, unlike opera, to religious themes. Although intended for very

1700-1800’s, Opera became a popular musical entertainment to the British, French and Germans. They enjoyed ballad operas which included popular tunes at the time with comedy or sentimental plays, such as John Gay’s “The Beggar’s Opera” performed in 1728 (http://www.odl.ox.ac.uk/balladoperas/what.php) Many of these opera’s were mimicked and comic operas with original scores and many romantic plot based plays. Many believe that musical theatre is a descended of Operas, however Operas are actually spoofs

In this essay I am going to be talking about the Opera Genre in the Baroque Period that started in 1600 and ended around 1750. Baroque is a style of Western art music and in this time period it included composers such as Bach, Vivaldi and Handel. The composer I am most interested in concentrating on throughout this essay is Handel as he has been a big influence in the choice of Classical Music I have looked at throughout performance sessions. I also chose to sing lascia ch'io pianga in the Christmas

portrayed in their works. Although eighteenth-century authors such as Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), the author of Robinson Crusoe (1719) and Moll Flanders (1722) (whose protagonist is born and imprisoned in Newgate Prison), and John Gay's ballad opera The Beggar's Opera (1728), William Godwin's novel Caleb Williams (1794) had described the image of the infamous Newgate Prison in their writings, Charles Dickens's descriptions of the criminal world and the prison took a somewhat darker tone which appeared

plays, the actors on stage do not speak their lines they sing them! Opera is the combination of drama and music. Like drama, opera embraces the entire spectrum of theatrical elements: dialogue, acting, costumes, scenery and action, but it is the sum of all these elements, combined with music, which defines the art form called opera. Operatic dramas are usually serious, but there are several comic operas and funny scenes in tragic operas. The music is usually complicated and difficult to sing well. Only

Selections from Frauenliebe und –Leben open the program with an early insight of the perception of women. This song cycle follows a woman’s life through the view of her relationship with a man, while highlighting her lack of individuality and independence without this man. “Seit ich ihn gesehen” (tr. “Since I Saw Him”) claims that the man is the only thing upon which the speaker can focus. The falling motives present throughout this movement highlight her complete infatuation with her love to the

classified post-modernists as they are classified modernists (Faulkner 22, Abrams 168). Faulkner remarks, “It is in poetry and the novel that Modernism can first be most clearly discerned […] developments in drama followed a different course” (21). Opera, or music in general, for that matter, is rarely commented upon in terms of modernism outside of musicology, saving the usual passing references to Stravinsky and Schoenberg, who have seemingly become the genre’s representative modernists (Abrams 168)

By changing the lyrics Gay has now made this song into something more grotesque. The lyrics provide an image of how the Peachum’s feel about their daughters love life. This songs sweet tune holds a more detestable message. By manipulating the lyrics to fit into his satirical play, Gay has created a way to identify, and alternatively, detest some of his characters. Audiences would have known the music that Gay chose and would have identified with it immediately, but upon hearing the lyrics they would

relationship. To document the female roles during this time, there were poems, books, and plays that depicted these roles. The two plays that showed the married women’s role would be The Country Wife which was written by William Wycherley and the Beggar’s Opera that was produced by John Gay. The roles of married women are describe in Jane Collier’s book, An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting, there is a section of which a man is giving advice to his daughter about being a married woman. The