The Beggar's Opera (Gay)

Introduction

A welcome appearance on DVD of Jonathan Miller`s 1983 television production of John Gay`s early-18th century theatrical work - a highly moral, very funny and vivid picture of low-life Hogarthian London.

The Beggar`s Opera is basically a comic farce, which pokes fun at the then very popular Italian opera, as well as the social and political climate of the age, being quite scathing towards well-known political and important people without naming them, although the audiences knew full well who was being lampooned. This is the first (and probably most famous) ballad opera, a genre which used short but popular songs of the time sung to new and sometimes quite scurrilous (for the time) lyrics.

Video

Unfortunately, this DVD was delivered `sans jacket`, however I gained the impression that it is a full-screen (non-anamorphic), PAL, Region 2 disk.

Perhaps it is a result of it being an early 80s television studio-bound production (although it`s a marvellous set!), but the colours appear dulled, and in some scenes, the brightness flickers rather dramatically, without having the excuse for candle-lit shots.

Audio

The sound is presented in Stereo, and needs little else as the dialogue, singing and instrumental backing (from the English Baroque Soloists, couducted by John Eliot Gardiner) are clear and well-balanced, although I quite often preferred to turn the subtitles on during the ballads as it helped get the full effect of the wit within Gay`s script.

Features

The extras are limited to text biographies of each of the main actors. I`m pretty sure there was a TV documentary on the making of this production at the time, and it`s a great shame that this wasn`t included on the disk.

Conclusion

This is definitely one of the great productions of musical theatre, in which Jonathan Miller pulled off the masterstroke of getting in Roger Daltrey to play Macheath (handsome soldier, infamous highwayman, complete bastard with the ladies, and of course utterly loveable). His singing matches the style of songs brilliantly, and shows himself to be a fine musician, producing some quite delicate sounds for such a hard rocker. In fact, the singing is splendid all round, although the two lead females, Carol Hall (Polly Peachum) and Rosemary Ashe (Lucy Lockit) can`t seem to decide whether they are posh or not, sometimes slipping into good old `Lahndahn` acccents and sometimes not (when singing), although both have fine voices and are quite capable of tugging the heartstrings if necessary. Lucy`s song describing her childhood is particularly moving.

Even Patricia Routledge gets in on the act as Mrs Peachum, showing she doesn`t actually sound like Hyacinth Bucket all the time (to pretend you`re a bad singer/musician convincingly, you tend to have to be a very fine musican, as she proves here). She has some of the funniest lines in the work too, and it`s a shame she only appears in the first act.

Peter Bayliss (Lockit, the Gaoler) and Stratford Johns (Peachum - the fence and supergrass, all rolled into one) play off each other wonderfully, and Bayliss`s songs are delivered with a great amount of enjoyment, each one becoming more sleazy than the next (but considering his character used to pimp his daughter that`s probably to be expected).

Overall then, a thoroughly recommended DVD which shows that there were worthwhile musical productions once in a while on television. I only have one very minor niggle, and that is the insistence of using all the original (or so it seemed) words to the songs. It would perhaps have been more sensible to `update` things slightly by using less archaic terminology. A couple of things sent me scurrying off to the dictionary, and even then it was no help. But, it`s full of good-old, down to earth licentious behaviour, with rudeness from beginning to end and observations towards life, love, sex and death which are still very recognisable.