by Mr. GAY
(First produced in 1727) The original Music arranged, together with additional original numbers, by FREDERIC AUSTIN
Macheath's Companions and Women of the Town.
THE ORCHESTRA
Conducted by STANFORD ROBINSON
THIS sparkling Opera has been revived a great number of times ; indeed, in the two hundred years of its life it has never been off the London stage for more than twenty or thirty years at a time. We all remember its extremely successful recent revivals at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith.
The libretto (with spoken dialogue) was by the poet John Gay ; the music was a stringing together of nearly seventy popular tunes of the day, which were collected and arranged by Dr. Pepusch, a German who, as a young man, settled in London, and was for fifteen years Organist to the Charterhouse.
In those days one could pick up good tunes in the street, or take a stroll out to tho country at Hampstead or Islington, and help oneself from the songs that all sorts of labouring folk sang at work and play.
Putting copyright difficulties aside, could a modern Pepusch find nearly seventy tunes to-day at once known and whistled of all men and intrinsically of musical value sufficient to assure them a welcome a couple of centuries hence ? It seems doubtful. The moral of which is——But stay, what has The Beggar's Opera to do with morals ?