Beggar's Opera - Tapa dura

John Gay (1685–1732) was an English poet and dramatist. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera (1728), set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch. The characters, including Captain Macheath and Polly Peachum, became household names. John Gay did nothing to curry the favor of the government by The Beggar's Opera, in which Sir Robert Walpole was caricatured. This famous piece, which was said to have made "Rich gay and Gay rich", was an innovation in many respects. The satire of the play has a double allegory. The characters of Peachum and Macheath represent the famous highwayman and gangster Jonathan Wild and the cockney housebreaker Jack Sheppard. At the same time, Jonathan Wild was understood to represent Robert Walpole, whose government had been tolerant of Wild's thievery and the South Sea directors' escape from punishment. Under cover of the thieves and highwaymen who figured in it was disguised a satire on society, for Gay made it plain that in describing the moral code of his characters he had in mind the corruptions of the governing class. Part of the success of The Beggar's Opera may have been due to the acting of Lavinia Fenton, afterwards Duchess of Bolton, in the part of Polly Peachum.

One of the only ballad operas to survive the tests of time, Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera is a rare satire of Italian opera and its lofty reception in eighteenth century London. Examining the corruption that occurs in both the higher and lower echelons of society, the “opera” centers on a highwayman whose fortune inspires avarice in both an upper class lawman and his soon-to-be father-in-law. Insanely popular for its time and still revered today, The Beggar’s Opera remains a comic masterpiece.