John Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Jonathan Miller ? John Eliot Gardiner ? Roger Daltrey ? English Baroque Soloists
by Jonathan Miller
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DVD details
Actor: Gaye Brown, Isla Blair, John Benfield, Peter Bayliss, Rosemary AsheDirector: Jonathan Miller
Writer: John Gay
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: Classical, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Picture Format: Academy Ratio, 1.33:1
Running Time: 134 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2000-10-31
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Image Entertainment
DVD Reviews of John Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Jonathan Miller ? John Eliot Gardiner ? Roger Daltrey ? English Baroque Soloists
DVD Review: Worth having but DVD could stand to be remastered
Summary: 3 Stars
First off, this DVD has some issues. The video is soft and the audio is not as clear as it could be. Howver, by no means, is the current DVD unwatchable. In fact, I am surprised and pleased that it is available at all!
Although not a perfect production by any means, there is much here to merit notice. The supporting cast is uniformly excellent. Daltrey conducts himself fairly well in the lead role, although his voice doesn't seem especially suited to this style of singing. But, they needed a name and they wanted to make the production seem more hip, so what are ya gonna do?
DVD Review: Great! An opera in English
Summary: 4 Stars
I enjoyed watching this opera. I enjoyed it more when I searched for a libretto off the internet. (It has no subtitles.) The words are spoken and sung quickly, and many are not familiar modern English terms. Like many comic operas, it is really rather ridiculous. it is sung and acted well and the costumes are a delight.DVD Review: RETRAIN ME BACK!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an excellent show. I first saw it on PBS. Roger does a great job, not what you would expect. The fun back story is that Roger had to be classically trained to do this part and when he was done, he found he couldn't perform 'Who' music. He went back to the vocal coach in a panic and he 'retrained' Roger to go back to singing in a 'rock' voice. He was fine then, once he would scream properly!
Too bad that his turn in the 'Wizard of OZ' (also PBS) is not available, as he made an excellent tin man and didn't have to retrain his voice!
DVD Review: Gritty Beggar's Opera On the Whole a Success
Summary: 4 Stars
To those reviewers who long for the Olivier version and who think of The Beggar's Opera through the charming lens of the 1920s revival: Gay would be spinning in his grave if he ever heard someone use the word "romantic" in conjunction with his acid little play. I know that the play took on a life of its own, and was revived virtually every season throughout the 18th century, but let's not forget that he was out to write a scathing satire of the political and social corruptions of his day: the very idea of having a beggar write an "opera" for the marriage celebration of two catch-singers seemed so outrageous that the audience wasn't sure whether or not to boo it offstage until the middle of the first act. Audiences in 1728 loved it because it ridiculed rich and powerful political figures while it skewered the pretensions of Italian opera and opera-singers; audiences afterwards got charmed by the songs and by the mythology of its characters, as the play lost its immediate topical sting.
Jonathan Miller's production attempts to restore something of the grittiness of the original play, both by having Roger Daltrey as Macheath and by recreating the squalor of Peachum's lock and of Newgate prison (compare Miller's set of Newgate with Hogarth's famous painting of Act III and you'll see what I mean). Daltrey is both good and not good as Macheath: Macheath does have something of the rock-star about him--and makes Polly and Lucy's attraction to him plausible--and Daltrey's sneer captures the cynicism that underlines Macheath's character. Moreover, Daltrey rises to the occasion perfectly when he sings the "Greensleeves" rewrite "Since Laws were made for ev'ry Degree", thundering out his bitterness with a power that could only come from someone more used to belting out "Young Man's Blues" than Handel. I'm a little surprised that one reviewer would refer to him as a "boy"--Daltrey was 39 when this production was made in 1983. However, he sometimes seems a little out of place with more classically trained singers, such as Carol Hall (a staple of John Eliot Gardiner's Montiverdi Choir). He may also strike some as too "modern" for what is presented here as a period-piece, tho' personally I found Daltrey made the piece more accessible.
As for the rest of the cast: Peachum is a hoot, and Mrs. Peachum is delightfully grubby. Lockit gets a bit annoying after a while, but he really is a one-dimensional character. The teo female leads are equally matched, as Gay's beggar says they should be: Polly tries to be as starched and respectable as Lucy tries to enjoy her low status. Kudos also to the Broadside Band for their excellent period-instrument rendering of the music--again, a vast improvement over more "romantic" conceptions of the opera.
Two criticisms to finish off: why Miller changed the ending is beyond me,and is the biggest misstep in an otherwise fine production. The sound, as others have noted, is terrible: a real hindrance for those trying to hear the music. Given that this was recorded for TV in 1983, some of the technical problems are excusable--but a digitally remastered version of the soundtrack would be most welcome.
Not a perfect rendering of the Beggar's Opera, but one appreciably closer to an eighteenth-century sensibility than previous versions.
DVD Review: (none)
Summary: 3 Stars
A very good preduction overall if not slightly 'uncut'...however, all those other reviewers who say that the olivier version has 'disapeared' should try looking on the amazon.co.uk website where it is available on either region 2 dvd or PAL video.
Description of John Gay - The Beggar's Opera / Jonathan Miller ? John Eliot Gardiner ? Roger Daltrey ? English Baroque Soloists
Created especially for television, this version of John Gay's "The Beggar's Opera" captures the quality and satiric edge of the Hogarth engravings which influenced Gay's original version. The characters of this highly-spirited comedy of London's lowlife thrive on thieving, lechery and deceit. Starring Bob Hoskins and Roger Daltrey of The Who, "The Beggar's Opera" is one of the great seminal works of British musical theatre and has achieved staggering success continuously since its first performance in 1728.John Gay's The Beggar's Opera created a theatrical revolution in London in 1728. It lampooned the conventions of Italian opera seria--then the reigning form of musical theatre in London--by putting the genre's aristocratic attitudes and high-flown sentiments into the dialogue of thieves, beggars, cutthroats, and prostitutes and by making it painfully clear that petty greed, vanity, and jealousies, not the noble sentiments uttered by operatic heroes, were what motivated its plot. For the elaborately structured da capo arias and rhetorical recitatives of opera seria, it substituted spoken dialogue and popular tunes of the time with new, satirical lyrics. It was sensationally popular because it was in touch with the contemporary environment.
Today, nearly three centuries later, it requires some historical background for complete enjoyment. Only a few of the tunes are still familiar, and for American audiences, subtitles might occasionally be useful. Some of the characters, representing small-time underworld operators, have Cockney accents almost as impenetrable as the German, Italian, or Russian heard in other opera videos. But the performance is superbly styled and it grows more enjoyable with repeated hearings. The cast includes some highly skilled stars of British TV who slip easily into a baroque equivalent of their sitcom experience. For Americans, the best-known cast member is Roger Daltrey (of the rock group the Who), perhaps better-known for Tommy than for The Beggar's Opera. --Joe McLellan
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