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"The Fairy Queen" is one of the four masterpieces in H. Purcell's work (about 1659-1695) along with "Dido and Aeneas", "The King Arthur", and the "Prophetess or The Story of Dioclesian". The genre of "The Fairy Queen" is defined as a masque opera, a musical performance in a very florid style with ballet dancers and allegorical characters. Amateur performers often used masques to conceal their high parentage - hence the name of the genre. |
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The author of the ballad opera "The Beggar's Opera" is John Gay (1685-1732), a playwright and a poet. John Pepusch (1667-1752), an English composer of German parentage, composed the overture and the accompaniment (basso numerato).
The performance is based on the popular music of the time: English and Scottish folk songs and ballads, Purcell's and Handel's tunes (among them the famous chorus from "The Fairy Queen" "I pressed her hand gently" and popular march "Let us take the road" from Handel's opera "Rinaldo", which is still played in front of the Buckingham Palace during the changing of the guard).
The opera turned out to be an amusing parody and was a great success with the English audience of the middle of the XVIII-th century. The appeared numerous remakes and imitations. The influence of this kind of music was still felt in the middle of the XX-th century, when the "Threepenny opera" (1928) by Brecht and Weill and Britten's "The Beggar's Opera" (1948) were written.
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The new movement in the development of this undemanding entertaining popular music replaced the high genre music of Dowland, Byrd, Handel and Purcell whose accomplishments made the English art world-famous throughout the previous centuries.
However we don't find any development of the ballad opera. The imitations, as is often the case, proved to be much poorer than the original works, and the new movement gradually died.
Since that time the English music has fallen into oblivion for two centuries. This is a historical precedent to be born in mind.
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