T.O.D.
CD - Nothing
DVD - Some home movies of a very young elmore!
Is that why you wouldn't stop bothering me at THE BEGGAR'S OPERA, you little stalker!
Well, after those stories Alex Pope told me!
LOL!
I just reviewed the Roger Daltrey BBC version of BEGGAR'S OPERA, which was really quite good IMHO.
Except they do hang him in the end, which is not the original play's intention.
Yes--I go into that in my review. Personally I think Gay simply caved to pressure for a "happily ever after." It doesn't really make much sense in the original version.
Not in the least! Hanging Macheath distorts his deliberate parody of the popular Italian
opera seria and ther silly happy endings of the time. Also, reprieving Macheath gives the "playwright" a chance to comment on his forced happy ending; Macheath and Polly appear in his sequel POLLY, which was not staged in Gay's lifetime.
PLAYER. All this we must do, to comply with the Taste of the Town.
BEGGAR. Through the whole Piece you may observe such a Similitude of Manners in high and low Life, that it is difficult to determine whether (in the fashionable Vices) the fine Gentlemen imitate the Gentlemen of the Road, or the Gentlemen of the Road, the fine Gentlemen.----Had the Play remain'd, as I at first intended, it would have carried a most excellent Moral. 'Twould have shown that the lower sort of People have their Vices in a degree as well as the Rich: And that they are punish'd for them.