John Gay and the London TheatreUniversity Press of Kentucky, 2014 M10 17 - 232 páginas The Beggar's Opera, often referred to today as the first musical comedy, was the most popular dramatic piece of the eighteenth century—and is the work that John Gay (1685-1732) is best remembered for having written. That association of popular music and satiric lyrics has proved to be continuingly attractive, and variations on the Opera have flourished in this century: by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht, by Duke Ellington, and most recently by Vaclav Havel. The original opera itself is played all over the world in amateur and professional productions. But John Gay's place in all this has not been well defined. His Opera is often regarded as some sort of chance event. In John Gay and the London Theatre, the first book-length study of John Gay as dramatic author, Calhoun Winton recognized the Opera as part of an entirely self-conscious career in the theatre, a career that Gay pursued from his earliest days as a writer in London and continued to follow to his death. Winton emphasizes Gay's knowledge of and affection for music, acquired, he argues, by way of his association with Handel. Although concentrating on Gay and his theatrical career, Winton also limns a vivid portrait of London itself and of the London stage of Gay's time, a period of considerable turbulence both within and outside the theatre. Gay's plays reflect in varying ways and degrees that social, political, and cultural turmoil. Winton's study sheds new light not only on Gay and the theatre, but also on the politics and culture of his era. |
Dentro del libro
Resultados 1-5 de 10
... Colley Cibber would be staples of the London and provincial theatres for decades.” The musical theatre and music in the theatre were evolving rapidly: Vanbrugh and Congreve, sensing the evolution but misreading theatrical finance, had ...
... Colley Cibber, Robert Wilks, and Thomas Doggett, who were disposed to play it safe in repertory choice, to go for the tried and true. This of course made it difficult for new plays to find production. Playwrights would bleat about this ...
... Colley Cibber, co-manager and comedian, as playing Gentle the fop, leering at the audience, milking his lines as he ... Cibber's aspirations to gentility were one of the Town's favorite jokes for a quartercentury or more, apotheosized in ...
... Colley Cibber, and Robert Wilks, and rehearsals with the company. The negotiations were successful. The managers accepted the play on its merits. Gay had no shadow of noble patronage, not that these managers would have paid much ...
Alcanzaste el límite de visualización de este libro.
Contenido
1 | |
11 | |
26 | |
4 Words and Music | 41 |
5 False Starts | 60 |
6 The Beggar and His Opera | 73 |
7 The Beggars Opera in Theatre History | 87 |
8 The Opera as Work of Art | 109 |
10 Last Plays | 145 |
Epilogue | 169 |
Were the Mohocks Ever Anything More than a Hairstyle? | 171 |
Gays Payment for the Opera | 174 |
Reference Abbreviations | 175 |
Notes | 178 |
Index | 201 |
9 Polly and the Censors | 128 |