Beg, Borrow, and Steal—The Show
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Beg, Borrow and Steal
is a celebration of John Gay’s The
Beggar’s Opera as interpreted by Frederic
Austin, Benjamin Britten, Richard Bonynge
and Douglas Gamley, Kurt Weill, and Duke
Ellington, plus new arrangements by Richard
Link.
“Be the author who
he will, we push his play as far as it
will go.”
Depending upon your needs and circumstances
Beg, Borrow and Steal
can be presented as a recital (all songs
and no dialogue) or as a theatrical piece
utilizing dialogue, dance, costumes and
lighting.
The five versions of The Beggar’s Opera
we explore are:
1. Frederic Austin
This arrangement of The
Beggar’s Opera was performed
at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith with “new
settings of the airs and additional music
by Frederic Austin” in 1920. It was
a huge hit and ran for 1,463 consecutive
performances. Mr. Austin was a well known
and respected professional singer, teacher
and composer.
2. Benjamin Britten
Benjamin Britten’s setting was written
for the English Opera Group and first performed
in 1948 in Cambridge at The Arts Theatre.
It was subsequently performed at the Holland
Festival, the Cheltenham Festival, the Festival
du Littoral Belgique, and at Sadler’s Wells
Theatre in London. Mr. Britten set the piece
in a laundry frequented by beggars. He used
all but 3 of the original songs and additional
dialogue was written by its producer, Tyrone
Guthrie.
3. Richard Bonynge and Douglas
Gamley
This version was conceived by noted conductor
and musicologist Richard Bonynge
and Douglas Gamley for Australian
Opera in 1981. Bonynge created an operatic
version and scored it for a full symphony
orchestra. About the opera Bonynge says:
“The musical language of the new
version is that of the present day, with
at least some of the satirical element
of the original retained by gentle parodying
of a wide-range or eighteenth, nineteenth
and twentieth-century musical styles.”
4. Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht
Undoubtedly the most well-known adaptation
is Kurt Weill and Bertold Brecht’s
The Threepenny Opera
which premiered on August 31, 1928 in Berlin.
Brecht’s secretary, Elizabeth Hauptmann,
saw the Lyric Hammersmith’s production
of 1920 and translated the play into German.
This translation was the basis for Brecht’s
adaptation of the story. Brecht approached
Kurt Weill to write the music who at first
was very skeptical.
Within one year, 46 new productions of the
piece had been performed across Europe.
The original German version has been performed
more than 10,000 times and translated into
18 languages. The most famous English version,
by Marc Blitzstein, was first performed
in 1952 at Brandeis University with Leonard
Bernstein conducting. The show was restaged
in New York at the off-Broadway Theatre
de Lys in Greenwich Village, opening on
March 10, 1954. This production ran until
1961, with over 2,600 performances which
was, at the time, the longest running musical
in history.
5. Duke Ellington
Our final version is Duke Ellington’s Beggar’s
Holiday with lyrics and book by John
Latouche which premiered on Broadway
in 1946 and ran for 111 performances. It
debuted six years before Kurt Weill’s work
was introduced to the American theatre-going
public. Beggar’s Holiday was revived, in
an updated version by Dale Wasserman,
last year in California. Richard
Link has written new arrangements of
these songs for our production.
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