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The Beggar’s Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay. It is one of the watershed plays in Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were satiric musical plays using some of the conventions of opera, but without recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time.
The original run of The Beggar’s Opera, of 62 consecutive performances, was the longest run in the theatre up to that time. The work became Gay’s greatest success and has been played ever since. In 1920, The Beggar’s Opera began an astonishing run of 1,463 performances at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London, which was one of the longest runs in history for any piece of musical theatre at that time.
Production dates were Tuesday 13th to Saturday 17th May 2008, at 7:30pm.
We hope to be able to publish a review, written by James Ross, of Coronach, who supplied the music for the production, once permissions have been given. James also played the part of the Beggar.
We entered “Where Helen Lies” at this festival, which took place in Dingwall Academy at 7:00pm on Saturday 23rd February 2008.
The Florians team won the prize for best production and were overall runners up at the Moray Firth heat of the Scottish Community Drama Association One Act Play competition. A good turnout of members saw the cast, directed by Nicholas Nicol and with technical support from Johnathan Stuart, put on a very strong performance which got extremely encouraging comments from the adjudicator. As well as commending Nicky's direction he also complimented the very strong vocal acting and the comic timing of the cast.
The winning entry, by Dingwall Players, will now go forward to the North of Scotland heats in Portree at the end of March.
Congratulations to everyone involved.