The Beggar’s Opera

John Gay (1685-1732), a genial poet and playwright with a talent for satire, got the idea for The Beggar’s Opera from his friend, the satirist Jonathan Swift, who had mentioned to him that “A Newgate pastoral might make a pretty sort of thing”. In general, ballad opera, set among London’s criminal classes and full of satirical jibes about corruption in high places, suited English taste better than Handel’s heroic operas by the 1720s.

Created specially for television, this Beggar’s Opera captures the quality and satiric edge of the Hogarth engravings which influenced Gay’s original version.

The music for this production has been arranged from the eighteenth-century folksongs of the original (selected by Johann Christoph Pepusch) by baroque specialists Jeremy Barlow and John Eliot Gardiner, who conducts The English Baroque Soloists, performing on authentic period instruments.

Roger Daltrey, lead singer of The Who and star of the films including Tommy, McVicar and Lisztomania, heads a distinguished cast as the villainous hero Macheath.