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ballad opera

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ballad opera, in English drama, a play of comic, satiric, or pastoral intent, interspersed with songs, most of them sung to popular airs. First and best was The Beggar's Opera (1728) by John Gay Gay, John, 1685–1732, English playwright and poet, b. Barnstaple, Devon. Educated at the local grammar school, he was apprenticed to a silk mercer for a brief time before commencing his literary career in London.
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. The vogue for these operas lasted until c.1750.

ballad opera

English 18th-century comic opera in which songs and musical interludes, usually consisting of existing popular tunes or opera melodies with new words, are interspersed with spoken dialogue. The first ballad opera, The Beggar's Opera (1728), by John Gay and J.C. Pepusch (1667–1752), was a sharply satirical work that became wildly popular and led to numerous similar works. Ballad opera led directly to the German singspiel and can be seen as the source of the modern musical.



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Heidi Helen Davis, the gifted interpreter of such past Theatricum triumphs as ``A Streetcar Named Desire'' (1993) and ``The Glass Menagerie'' (1994), stages this ballad opera, as adapted into English by Marc Blitzstein.
 
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