Benjamin Britten's 1948 version of The Beggar's Opera contains more of the original tunes assembled by John Gay for his 1728 ballad opera than most other modern versions. It also bears the most individualistic imprint of any modern version, to the extent that Britten is fully justified in designating it as his Op. 43. The orchestration is distinctively quirky; the chamber ensemble for which he arranged it is strikingly similar to that of The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring, and it makes no attempt to disguise its ...
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Benjamin Britten's 1948 version of The Beggar's Opera contains more of the original tunes assembled by John Gay for his 1728 ballad opera than most other modern versions. It also bears the most individualistic imprint of any modern version, to the extent that Britten is fully justified in designating it as his Op. 43. The orchestration is distinctively quirky; the chamber ensemble for which he arranged it is strikingly similar to that of The Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring, and it makes no attempt to disguise its twentieth century idiom. Harmonically, too, Britten lets his imagination run free, and his accompaniments are unmistakably modern. In his treatment of the folk, popular, and classical melodies to which Gay attached his lyrics, though, Britten is scrupulously faithful to the originals, retaining all the eccentricities that can sound quite odd to modern ears, and which tend to get smoothed out and made "prettier" in most modern editions of the work. Ballad opera is not a familiar genre, this...
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