Cheap Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Gardiner, Hoskins, Daltrey, English Baroque Soloists (Video) (Jonathan Miller) Price

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Customer Reviews of Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Gardiner, Hoskins, Daltrey, English Baroque Soloists

A near perfect performance
I'm fairly familiar with both the period when the Beggar's Opera was written and with the popular tunes it is based on. Its only real flaw is that Roger Daltrey is not the best singer for this type of music. It pays to know (or look up) the traditional lyrics used with the tunes, as Gay seems to have written his lyrics with reference to them (and the original audience would have known them). Comparison of both versions often reveals a satiric intent. There are many period jokes, such as when a lawyer who specializes in defending various types of thieves reads out a client list of pickpockets, houebreakers, etc. and the list includes "tailor." Tailors were often accused of appropriating some of the fabric provided by their clients and pretending it had been used up in the garment.

To me, at least, this was a very witty opera with lots of action as well as good music.

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Excellent direction and performances
Although I understand the complaints about the dialogue being unintelligible, I actually thought the songs were very easy to understand. Both the singing and the general presentation of the music were excellent--John Eliot Gardner does a great job of music direction. I also agree that this is an excellent version to use in teaching; it's lively, thoughtful, virtually uncut, and offers some interesting interpretations. (Jonathan Miller diverges from the text at the end, but it is a thought-provoking divergence.) It's not a sugar-candy version of the Opera, but since the threat of death by hanging is a central element of the text, I don't see the gritty aspects of this performance as a problem.

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A misconceived flop
Despite all that is praiseworthy about this production--sets, costumes, supporting roles--it misses John Gay's artistic intent by several thousand light years. Gay didn't write just another British working-class grumble about real or fancied oppression by everybody in sight, as this production has it. He crafted a sly, funny dig at the upper classes as aped by the lowest: outcasts, thieves and scalawags. Until Jonathan Miller's "rehabilitation" it was a very funny, even romantic, little piece. Anthony Powell, in his autobiography, dwells nostalgically on the charm it cast every time a new production was mounted every 20 years or so. Or at least did cast until this latest--which should finish it for good. It may be politically unimpeachable but artistically it is witless and mendacious.
The now unobtainable Olivier version, marred only by Lord Laurence's decision to sing his own part, may well be the last to respect Gay's original intent.