2 April 2005
Saturday 2 April 2005 13:00-14:00 (Radio 3)
Beggars, Ballads and a Brouhaha!
Lucie Skeaping looks at the inspiration, background and impact of John Gay's celebrated Beggar's Opera which first performed in London in 1728 as a reaction to the excesses and pretensions of fashionable Italian opera.
Far from the exulted realms of the ancient heroes and the classical gods, the opera celebrates the worst of 18th century London street life, featuring beggars, cut-throats, thieves and prostitutes singing the popular ballads of the day.
Playlist
Trad: Give me my Yellow Hose Again
The City Waites
CD "The English Tradition" EUCD 1616
Trad: Green Stockings
The City Waites
CD "The Musitians of Grope Lane" MCPS 070969
Trad: Lumps of Pudding
The City Waites
CD "The English Tradion" EUCD 1616
Trad: The Frolic
CD "The Musitians of Grope Lane" MCPS 070969
Trad: The Song of the Cutpurse
The City Waites
CD "Low and Lusty Songs" SAMHSCD202
Handel: Julius Ceasar: Overture, Presti omai l'Egizia terra
La Grande Ecurie et la Chambre du Roy
Jean-Claude Malgoire
James Bowman
CD Astree E8558
GAY John:
Excerpts from The Beggars Opera:
Pretty Polly say, My heart was so free, Where I laid on Greenland's
Coast, O what a pain it is to part, The miser thus a shilling sees, Why
how now Madame flirt, Which way shall I turn me, When my hero in court
appears, When he holds up his hand, Our selves like the great to secure
a retreat, The charge is prepared, The saint turn's sinner, A fox may
steal your hens, Since laws were made, Would I might be hanged, Thus I
stand like the Turk
Sarah Walker, Charles Daniels, Richard Jackson, Andrian Thompson,
Bronwen Mills, Anne Dawson, Bob Hoskins, Ian Caddy
The Broadside Band
Jeremy Barlow - Director
CD Hyperion CDA 66591/2
