The Beggar's Opera is a ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by John Gay with music arranged by Johann Christoph Pepusch. 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 that used 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.

Date of composition 1948 (December 1947 - May 1948)
Premiered 1948, May 24th (Arts Theatre) in Cambridge, United Kingdom
Dedicated to 'Dedicated to James Lawrie'
Type Opera
Catalogue BTC 1020
Approx. duration 108 minutes
Spoken language English
Instruments Other - Cast
Orchestra
Autotranslations beta Benjamin Britten: The Beggar's Opera, BTC 1020
Benjamin Britten: The Beggar's Opera, BTC 1020
Benjamin Britten: The Beggar's Opera, BTC 1020