After the success of The Beggar's Opera in 1728, composer Johann Christoph Pepusch and librettist John Gay followed it the next year with a sequel, Polly. Initially suppressed for political reasons, the work didn't reach the stage until 1777, with an entirely renovated score by Samuel Arnold and an updated libretto by George Coleman the Elder. In spite of its title, Polly: An Opera, the work is far more like an operetta than an opera, with considerable spoken dialogue interspersed with brief airs and dances. The vast ...
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After the success of The Beggar's Opera in 1728, composer Johann Christoph Pepusch and librettist John Gay followed it the next year with a sequel, Polly. Initially suppressed for political reasons, the work didn't reach the stage until 1777, with an entirely renovated score by Samuel Arnold and an updated libretto by George Coleman the Elder. In spite of its title, Polly: An Opera, the work is far more like an operetta than an opera, with considerable spoken dialogue interspersed with brief airs and dances. The vast majority are shorter than two minutes (the CD has 50 tracks!) so in this presentation of the music alone, the result is inevitably choppy, and doesn't give the listener much of a sense of what the whole ballad opera was like, or how the music related to the action. It's all attractive, perky, and witty, if not particularly profound or memorable, at least in part because each piece comes and goes so quickly. This world-premiere recording by the Toronto-based Aradia Ensemble, led by Kevin...
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