"The Beggar's Opera" and "opra-comique en vaudevilles"

Author(s): Daniel Heartz

Source: Early Music, Vol. 27, No. 1, Music and Spectacle (Feb., 1999), pp. 42-43+45-47+49-53
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Daniel Heartz
The
Beggar's Opera
and
opera-comique
en vaudevilles
IX
XnZ
ol,
t sit. RTW
i6
14
jjj?
4;444i
ur,
1 Nicholas van
Blarenberghe,
miniature
painting
of the Foire Saint Germain in Paris
(1763) (London,
Wallace
Collection)
J
OHN
Gay
created ballad
opera
with The
Beggar's
Opera
of
1728 by capitalizing
on the richness of
traditional
song
in the British
Isles,
just
as Alain
Lesage
had a few
years
earlier seized on
popular
French
songs
when
creating
a new kind of satirical
comedy-opera-comique.
The French
genre
had a
perilous gestation,
but once born it turned out to be
a resilient child.' Buffeted
by royal privileges
that
granted spoken
drama to the Comedie
Frangaise,
sung
drama to the
Opera,
and commedia dell'arte to
the
The*ttre
Italien,
opera-comique
survived
only by
paying
fees to one or more of the three
royal compa-
nies. A
product
of the humble suburban theatres
associated with the seasonal trade fairs of Saint Ger-
main and Saint Laurent,
opera-comique
was
by
nature a
popular spectacle.
Nicholas van Blaren-
berghe captured
the
hurly-burly
of the winter fair at
Saint Germain in a miniature
painting
of
1763
(illus.1), showing
actors
enticing
the crowd to enter
their theatre. Above the door on a
platform
struts a
42
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999
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Harlequin,
his
slapstick protruding
behind
him,
while another
player
balances in the air.
The decisive moment for
opera-comique
came at
the
very
end of the
reign
of Louis
XIV,
when
Lesage,
a successful novelist and
experienced playwright
at
the Com die
Frangaise, began
to work for the
Theatre de la Foire and its
players,
called Forains.
With
Arlequin
roi de
Serendib,
written in
1712
and
staged
at the Foire Saint Germain in
1713, Lesage put
together
a three-act
comedy sung
from
beginning
to
end,
employing
over 6o
popular
tunes,
or vaude-
villes. He wrote several more such comedies
staged
in
1714.
T6lmaque (1715), parodied
after a
tragedy
with the same title
composed by
Destouches for the
Opera, managed
to introduce some
spoken dialogue
between
songs, whereupon opdra-comique
assumed
its classic form.
All these works
occupy pride
of
place
in the first
volume of Le
Thieatre
de la
Foire,
ou
l'opera comique,
a work
published
in Paris and Amsterdam in various
editions between
1721
and
1734,
ultimately
amount-
ing
to ten volumes. To illustrate the first volume the
artist Bernard Picart created a
charmingly
Gallic
frontispiece
dated
1730 (illus.2) showing
how the
Muse of
Comedy
assembled
Poetry (bare-breasted),
Music
(with
a
hurdy-gurdy),
and Dance to
produce
the little entertainments under the name of
'Opera
Comique'. Players
cavort on the
balcony
above the
crowd,
where a
Harlequin
strikes a
pose
similar to
that in
illus.1,
a Pierrot doffs his
hat,
and another
player gestures
to a
tight-rope
walker
depicted
on a
banner.
Arlequin
roi de Serendib shows
Lesage
to be a
master at
parodying
the texts of vaudevilles and con-
structing zany plots.
In this one
Harlequin
arrives on
the island of
Ceylon,
alias Sri
Lanka,
alias Serendib
(whence
comes our word
'serendipity').
He lands
after a
shipwreck
in which he robbed and
perhaps
killed a
wealthy lawyer.
Exit
Harlequin.
Enter Pierrot
and Mezzetin
disguised
as women in order to avoid
falling
victim to the local custom
by
which one male
stranger
a month was sacrificed after
having
been
made
king
for a
day.
The Grand Vizir has been smit-
i"?"" :';:
: -
. ."
...... ?...............
.............
"
~ ~ ~ ~
.
.. ....... .::ii!
c7Z 'OS
,
VeCe
Z
~
41
e17)'Wa lzasevz~ SltjZ i Tgee.6zr&
2 Bernard
Picart,
engraved frontispiece (1730)
for the
Theatre de la Foire
ten with the charms of Mezzetin and has elevated
him/her to the office of
High
Priestess,
as
explained
in a vaudeville for Pierrot. For Mezzetin's
response
Lesage
chose an air called 'Ne m'entendez-vous
pas?'
focusing
the audience's attention on the sexual
ambiguity
of the
situation,
as Mezzetin
expresses
anxiety
and a wish that he/she had fewer charms:
Daniel Heartz is
Professor of
the Graduate
School,
University of California, Berkeley.
His
Haydn,
Mozart and the Viennese
School, 1740-1780
appeared
in the Norton
History of
Music series in
1995.
A
companion
volume,
Galant
music,
Vivaldi to
Gluck,
is well under
way.
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999 43
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Oui,
mais Pierrot, he1as!
Que je
crains sa tendresse!
Tous les
jours
il me
presse
...
Tu vois mon embaras.
Que n'ai-je
moins
d'appas!
In this case
Lesage
did not
incorporate
the words of
the timbre
(the
title
by
which the tune
went)
into his
verse,
although
he often did.
The Grand Vizir himself next
appears,
continues
his
passionate
advances,
and threatens to
carry
them
through
to their natural conclusion that
very day.
Mezzetin and Pierrot react with fear and
trembling,
to
express
which
Lesage
chose a
congruent
air,
'Les
Trembleurs' from
Lully's
Isis. The
operas
of
Lully
furnished several such airs for stock situations and
they
were
printed along
with the vaudevilles in
musical notation at the end of the volumes of the
Thehetre de la Foire.
Harlequin
becomes
king
for a
day
in Act 2. He is
given
all the food he can
eat,
wine as
well,
and an
obliging lady
friend,
La
Favorite,
who
complains
about his excessive
eating
and
drinking.
In Act
3
Harlequin,
tired of La
Favorite,
asks the head eunuch
if he must remain faithful to her. Staunch son of
Bergamo
he
may
be,
but
fidelity
fills him with
horror,
he
avers,
and in this
respect,
at
least,
he is a
Frenchman. The chief of the eunuchs
replies
that
infidelity
is not
contrary
to the
law,
on a tune that is
identified
by
its timbre as 'Faire l'amour la nuit et le
jour'.
Clever auditors would have known the tune
from its
very beginning,
also known that its timbre
comes at the
end,
like an
epigram.
In
question
is how
or whether
Lesage
will
incorporate
the timbre in his
verse. In this case he writes
up
to and into
it,
making
a
rhyme
between 'Faire' and 'Contraire'
(ex.1).
The
air
belongs
to a melodic and
rhythmic type
that was
at least 200
years
old
by
the
early
18th
century,
namely
the three-bar
phrases
in
triple
metre of the
Branle de
Poitou,
a dance that
usually
carried erotic
connotations.
To end his
play Lesage drolly
caricatures the
sacrifice scene in
Iphigenie
en
Tauride,
a
tragedy by
Desmarets and
Campra
then
being performed
at the
Opera.
Instead of
Iphigenia putting
the knife to her
brother Orestes in the
temple,
it is Mezzetin as
High
Priestess who confronts
Harlequin,
robed and
gar-
landed as the sacrificial victim. This moment was
chosen for visual illustration and
as
the verse on the
banner
suspended
above
explains, Harlequin's
mot-
ley
identified him to his fellow scoundrels
(illus.3).
All three flee the
temple, stealing
what
they
can,
and
make haste
returning
to Paris.
Exotic
settings
such as
Ceylon
were much
favoured in
opera-comique.
La Foire de
Guibray,
on
the other
hand,
depicts
a
horse-trading
fair in rural
Normandy;
Le tombeau de Nostrodamus is set in the
town of Salons in
Provence;
La ceinture de VWnus
takes
place
in the Bois de
Boulogne
outside Paris. All
three of these comedies
by Lesage belong
to
1714-15.
The last offers the
novelty
of a duet with music
by
Elisabeth
Jacquet
de la Guerre.
Specially composed
Ore. r
xezzace.
.. .
.
.
. .., .
.
:" :: :
.: .
..... ... ..
3 Temple
scene in
Lesage's Arlequin
roi de Serendib
(1713)
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999 45
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Ex.1
Air from
Lesage's Arlequin
roi de Serendib
(1713)
Le Chef des
Eunuques
A l'in - fi - de - li - t6 La loi n'est
point
con
-
trai
-
re. A
plus
d'u
-
ne beaul
-
9
+
- II
-Ir ,J
-t6: Sei -
gneur,
vous
pour
- rez
fai
- re L'a - mour la nuit et le
jour.
Ex.2 Traditional air
parodied by Gay
in The
Beggar's Opera (1728)
k,+,+

'
K,
|
K
/
I
k,,
/ /

,
/ I
Would
you
have a
young
vir -
gin
of fif -
teen
years,
You must tic
-
kle her fan
-
cy
with
Gay:
If the heart of a man is de-
pressed
with
cares, The mist is dis -
pell'd
when a
4
sweets and
dears, E - ver
toy
-
ing,
and
play- ing,
and sweet
-
ly,
sweet
-
ly Sing
a love son -net, and
Gay:
woman
ap
-
pears;
Like the notes of a fid - dle she sweet
-
ly,
sweet
-
ly
Rais
-
es the
spi
-
rits and
8
charm her ears: Wit
-
ti
-ly, pret
-
ti
-
ly
talk her
down, Chase
her, and
praise
her, if fair or
brown,
Gay:
charms our ears, Ros
-
es and li - lies her cheeks dis
-
close, But her
ripe lips
are more sweet than those.
13
Ait
e.
'r I
, I" II J
I
- ."
I 1 P" m
,. + ,I
Soot her,'+ m I I r']P
ir
+.
r J
,
Sooth
her,
and smooth her And tease
her, and
please
her, And touch but her smic -
ket, and all's
your
own.
Gay:
Press her, Ca - ress her, With bliss -
es,
Her Kiss - es Dis - solve us in
pleas
- ure and soft re -
pose.
Ex.3 Gay's parody
of the French dance air
'Cotillon'
Macheath:
..
.
..P
o.p
A I-I * II R
Youth's the sea - son made for joys, Love
is
then our du - ty,
Macheath:
Let us drink and sport to -
day, Ours is not to
-
mor -
row.
LovShe
with
youth
flies swift a -
way, Age is
nought but
sorher beau
-
tyrow.
Chorus:
d i
I Times
on
wing
Le n
verki?
R
S i
I
,
I
,
II -I I I
.
Let's be gay, While we may, Beau - ty's a flo'-wer, des pised in de- cay. Youth's the sea - son,
etc.
Macheath:
Let us drink and sport to
-
day, Ours is not to- mor
-
row.
Love with youth flies swift a
-
way, Age is nought but sor
-
row.
Chonrus:_,
46
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999
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5M,(
4
William
Hogarth, painting
of The
Beggar's Opera,
Act
3
scene
11
(London,
Tate
Gallery)
music became more common in
opera-comique
as it
matured;
the
composer
most identified with the first
phase
of the
genre
is
Jean-Claude
Gillier.
Le tableau du
mariage
is a one-act
piece by Lesage
and Fuzelier
dating
from
1716
in which the scene
is set in Paris at the
bourgeois
home of Monsieur
and Madame
Pepin.
Their niece Diamantine is
about to
marry
her lover
Octave;
at the same time
her servant Olivette weds
Harlequin. Things
do
not turn out as
expected.
A series of
premonitions
about future abuse
by
their
spouses
afflict the
young
women. The aunt and uncle
try
to reason
with
them,
pointing
to their own
long
and har-
monious union as a model. But
they disagree
whether their
marriage
has lasted
38
or
40 years.
From this
bickering
the
argument grows
ever more
heated and
degenerates
into
physical
violence.
Knockabout farce
is,
of
course,
one of the lazzi of
commedia dell'arte and thus
hardly surprising,
but
the
way
it intrudes
upon bourgeois
rectitude does
surprise.
The
young
ladies renounce all
thoughts
of
marriage just
as the exultant
guests
arrive to
celebrate the double
wedding.
And so ends this dark
little
comedy.
By 1716,
the
year
of Le tableau du
mariage, Lesage
and his collaborators were
mixing nearly equal parts
of
spoken
and
sung
texts,
both kinds
going
to all
characters. This does not mean that the Forains were
free of threats and lawsuits from the
privileged
theatres. Far from it. In
spite
of
frequent
closures
imposed
on the Forains
opera-comique kept pouring
forth from the
pens
of
Lesage
and others. Some of
these comedies
long
resounded on
stages
around
Europe.
Two
examples
must suffice. Le monde
renverse of
1718,
revived
many
times in Paris
itself,
to
which it held
up
a mirror
reflecting corruption
and
fatuity, provided
the basis for Telemann's
Singspiel
Die verkehrte Welt of
1728
for
Hamburg
and for
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999 47
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Gluck's
opera-comique
for Vienna in
1758.
PNlerins de
la
Mecque
of
1726
became the source of Gluck's last
opdera-comique
for Vienna, La rencontre
imprdvue
of
1764,
which in its turn
inspired
the libretto of
Haydn's opera
buffa L'incontro
improvviso
of
1775.
Given the
quality
and
spread
of
Lesage's type
of
opera-comique
it would be
strange
if some theatre
poet
in London did not seek to take
advantage
of this
Parisian
genre.
Before The
Beggar's Opera
London had no local
equivalent
of a
comedy
woven out of several dozen
popular songs.
What London did have were
frequent
visits from across the Channel
by
Parisian
troupes
playing opera-comique
en vaudevilles.
Frangois
Par-
faict,
in a
history
of the fair theatres
published
in
1743
noted the
passage
of several
prominent
Forain
play-
ers to
England
and back.3 A
couple
of
newspaper
announcements will
provide
a context for these
visits. In an issue of the
Daily
Courant dated 1 March
1720
there
appeared
this advertisement:
By
the
Company
of French
Comedians,
just
arrived from
France. At the
King's
Theatre in the
Hay Market, this
present
Saturday, being
the
5th
of
March, will be
presented
a Com-
edy
in French after the Italian
Manner, call'd
Harlequin
Dead and Reviv'd. With several Entertainments of
Dancing.4
A more
specific
notice
appeared
in the
Daily
Post
for
Monday 9 May 1726,
saying
that the French
comedians,
after a
play,
would
perform
also a
farce,
Le Tableau du
Mariage.
Never acted here
before; composed
by
Monsieur
Lesage.
With a new
Dance,
call'd Le
Cotillon,
performed by
12
dancers.5
The mention of
Lesage by
name
suggests
that he
had
already
earned a
good reputation
in
London,
as
well as in Paris. This
comedy
in
particular,
in which
an old
couple
shed their
role-playing
and show us a
slice of real
life,
could well have
ignited
a
spark
in
John
Gay.
He liked the 'new dance' called 'Cotillon'
so much he wrote a
key
scene around it in The
Beg-
gar's Opera
the
following year.
Harlequin
and his low-life
companions,
as
por-
trayed by Lesage,
are rascals with few
redeeming
features.
They
lie, cheat, steal, murder and devote
their more
positive energies
to
trying
to save their
necks,
eating, carousing
and
whoring.
But
they
do
not
betray
one
another, unlike the scoundrels in
The
Beggar's Opera,
in whom it is difficult to see
any
redeeming
features at all.
Lesage may
have some
rather noir moments, as for
example
in Le tableau
du
mariage,
which ends with the
proper young lady
saying
'Let us celebrate for not
having
committed
the sottise of
getting
married.'
Gay's
views, on the
other hand, whether on
humanity
in
general
or
marriage
in
particular,
are as black with
pessimism
as
any
ever uttered on
English stages.
One wonders
if he did not conceive the whole
thing
as a mon-
strously incongruous trope
on his own name.
Peachum and Mrs Peachum are
worthy
of rank-
ing
as the comic
counterparts
of Macbeth and
Lady
Macbeth.
They
never committed the
folly
of
getting
married, we learn,
except
in the common law sense.
Their
daughter Polly
takes
volleys
of verbal abuse
from both of them in Act 1 for
having
married the
head
highwayman, Captain Macheath,
who knows
all about the stolen
goods
racket of the
Peachums,
and is an
accomplice
to it.
They
see no solution to
their
problems
but
peaching
on
Macheath,
that
is,
literally
to
'peach'um',
thus
getting
him
hanged,
gaining
a rich reward for
turning
him
in, and a
wealthy
widow for a
daughter
to boot.
Polly,
in this
situation,
envisages
a kind of love
death for herself. In Act
I
scene
lo
she
sings
Air
13:
The turtle thus with
plaintive crying,
Her lover
dying,
Laments her dove.
Down she
drops quite spent
with
sighing,
Paired in
death, as
paired
in love.
The six-bar
phrases
with which the tune
begins
would
suggest
its French
origin
if we did not know
that its source was the air 'Le
printemps rappelle
aux
armes',
as
Gay
states. Mrs Peachum reacts to
Polly's
lament in
characteristically grim
terms,
speaking
these lines:
What, is the fool in love in earnest then? I hate thee for
being
particular [by
which she means
confining
her favours to one
person]
... Those cursed
play-books
she reads have been her
ruin ...
Away, hussy. Hang your husband, and be dutiful.
Peachum shows some reluctance in the next scene
but Mrs Peachum
goads
him to do in Macheath and
he
agrees,
as
Polly
overhears them. She is left alone
for a
soliloquy
in which she
imagines
his death on
the
gallows:
she resolves to warn
Macheath, who
instantly appears, singing
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999 49
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Pretty Polly, say,
When I was
away,
Did
your fancy
never
stray
To some newer lover?
Gay parodies
this from
'Pretty
Parrot
say,
/ When I
was
away'
in volume
5
of
D'Urfey's
Pills to
purge
melancholy,
where it is said to be 'translated from the
French'.
Polly
answers in
song, vouching
for her
constancy
to the same
tune,
which ends with his
'O0
pretty, pretty
Poll',
as in the model.
Spoken dialogue
resumes as
Polly
asks 'And are
you
as fond as
ever,
my
dear?' Macheath swears he will never forsake
her,
to which she
replies, 'Nay, my
dear,
I have no reason
to doubt
you,
for I find in the romance
you
lent
me,
none of the
great
heroes were ever false in love.'
Between her
playbooks
and now a romance
Polly
has
become
quite
the sentimental fool her mother takes
her to
be,
a
worthy
ancestor of Da Ponte's Donna
Elvira.
Air
15 goes
to Macheath.
Together
he and
Polly
sing
Air
16,
'Over the hills and far
away'. Gay
must
have
begun turning
sour on their
billing
and
cooing
by
this
point,
because he intrudes with a malicious
aside in a
way
that is
special
to vaudeville
comedy
and ballad
opera.
He sets
Polly's
Air
17,
'O
what
pain
it is to
part!'
to a tune the
original
text of which was
'Gin thou wert mine awn
thing',
as if
foretelling
the
general debauchery
soon to come in Act 2. This
ironic
commentary by way
of choice of timbre is
what I call an
incongruity trope. Lesage
uses it
often,
with
similarly
hilarious results.
Act II scene 1. A tavern near
Newgate. Jemmy
Twitcher,
Crook-fingered
Jack,
Wat
Dreary,
Robin of
Bagshot,
Nim-
ming
Ned,
Henry Padington,
Matt of the Mint,
Ben
Budge,
and the rest of the
gang,
at the table,
with wine,
brandy
and
tobacco.
The scene is
worthy
of
Hogarth,
and in fact he
painted something very
like
it,
a
picture
of several
gentlemen
at the end of an
evening
of
dissipation
that was
engraved
under the title A
Midnight
Modern
Conversation
(c.1732).
Matt of the Mint leads the
others in
song,
Air
19,
Fill
every glass,
for wine
inspires
us,
And fires us
With
courage,
love and
joy.
Women and wine should life
employ.
Is there
ought
else on earth desirous?
All the men
sing
the
refrain,
'Fill
every glass'.
The
model for this text is
'Que
chacun
remplisse
son
verre'.
Macheath enters and addresses the
brigands
as
gentlemen.
His
gang
leaves to the strains of 'Let us
take the
road',
Air
20,
sung
to the March from
Handel's Rinaldo. Left alone Macheath becomes
reflective.
What a fool is a fond wench!
Polly
is most
confoundedly
bit.
I love the sex. And a man who loves
money, might
as well be
contented with one
guinea,
as I with one woman.
His
speech
sets
up
Air 21 which is modelled on
'Would
you
have a
young virgin'
from The Modern
Prophets.6 Gay unerringly
chooses a
bawdy
text that
alludes as much or more to what is on Macheath's
mind than does the verse he
sings,
which is a master-
ful
parody
and even an
improvement
in the
way
it
follows the contour of the music. The tune is
given
with both texts underlaid in ex.2. A little
juggling
and
displacement
is needed to fit
Gay's
second line
to the tune. The small melodic thrust
carrying
the
tune from D
up
to E in the first four bars is
nicely
encapsulated
in bar
6,
then
pushes up
to the next
note, F#. Was it this
lovely
moment that first
attracted
Gay's
attention? He
preserves 'sweetly,
sweetly'
from the traditional text and turns the
melodic rise to
advantage
with 'Raises the
spirits'.
In
the second half of the
melody high
G is reached
before
descending
to the same conclusion as the first
strain. For the lewd
ending
of the
original
text
Gay
substitutes a more
vague
close,
'Dissolve us in
plea-
sure and soft
repose', neatly matching
verbal to the
musical effect of
sinking
to the low tonic.
The
example
can serve as a lesson in how a
poet
operates
when
writing
ballad
opera. Gay picks
poems
that offer him some ideas he can use in his
own
verse,
or at the
least,
a metric form with which
he can work. The tune comes
along
as a bonus, so to
speak,
but one that can also
inspire
the
poet,
as in
this case.
Burney
in his General
History of
Music
claimed that
Pepusch
was
'judiciously
chosen
by
Gay,
to
help
him to select the tunes for the
Beggar's
Opera'.
His claim
appears
to be a
misreading
of how
Gay
worked.
(And
how would
Burney,
who was
born in
1726,
have such detailed
knowledge
in
any
case?
Gay
died in
1732.) Lesage exploited
the
very
same
technique.
In manner of construction there
50
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999
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is no difference between ballad
opera
and
opera-
comique
en vaudevilles.
'I must have
women',
says
Macheath after Air 21.
He sends for a choice selection of his bawds: Mrs
Coaxer,
Dolly
Trull,
Mrs
Vixen,
Betty Doxy, Jenny
Diver,
Mrs
Slammekin,
Suky Tawdry,
and
Molly
Brazen.
They
next
appear
and are welcomed
by
Macheath one
by
one. He then
says:
But hark! I hear music. The
harper
is at the door. 'If music be
the food of love,
play
on.' E'er
you
seat
yourselves,
ladies,
what think
you
of a dance? Come in.
[Enter Harper.] Play
the French tune, that Mrs. Slammekin was so fond of.
The
stage
direction
specifies
'A Dance a la ronde in
the French manner;
near the end of it this
song
and
Chorus.' There follows Air 22
sung
to 'Cotillon'. This
well-loved vaudeville first
appeared
as a branle a"
quatre
in Feuillet's
Quatrieme
recueil de danses de bal
(1705)
and became associated with the text 'Ma com-
mere,
quand je
danse / Mon cotillon va-t-il bien?'
'Cotillon'
(which eventually engendered
the term
'cotillion')
means
'petticoat',
so there could
hardly
be a better choice for Macheath's collection of
'skirts'.
Lesage
first used the tune for a
dialogue
in
Tnlemaque.
It
appears
as Air
no.14o
in the
appendix
of tunes to the first volume of the Thedtre de la Foire
(illus.5). Preceding
is an
air, no.139,
which demon-
strates that the timbre did not
always
come from the
beginning
or the end-sometimes it came from the
middle.
Following
it is another famous
piece
called
'Cotillon',
obviously
made in imitation of the first.
Both are called 'Rondeau' and share the
key
of
D,
cut
time,
and the
upbeat
structure of the Gavotte
(return
of the refrain to end the
piece
defines the
simplest
kind of
Rondeau). Jean-Joseph
Mouret
composed
the second
piece
as one of the dances in his
opera-
ballet
Lesfetes
de Thalie for the
Opera (1714).
Within
the same
year Lesage employed
it as an orchestral
piece
at the
beginning
of his Ceinture de VWnus.
The famous tune loses some of its
lightness
in The
Beggar's Opera by being
in common time without an
upbeat.
Otherwise it is
unchanged except
for a few
melodic details and its
key,
C.
Gay
resorts to the old
theme of
Carpe
diem and draws it out over two clever
verses,
the refrain
being repeated by
the chorus of
ladies
(ex.3).
A word is in order about the 'dance a la ronde in
the French manner'. Branles were
typically
round
.-
*
z
,,z
i
cI Ii
, ..-..
_r I ,
i ..I
.
I I
Cid~eLec. '
fe
.uso x 1
,
,1.
1 v I
5
Airs
139-41
from volume
1
of Le Thidtre de la Foire
(1724)
dances for four or
more,
to one of several distinctive
rhythmic patterns
and
always lively
as to
tempo (Air
139
in
illus.5 deploys
the
alternating
trochees and
iambs of the Branle
gay,
as do several airs in The
Beg-
gar's Opera).
A modern commentator has
gone
so
far
astray
as to describe the dance
required
in Act 2
scene
1
as 'a
dignified
and formal
dance;
since the
dancers are Macheath and the
whores,
the effect is
burlesque'.7 Incongruity
has its
place aplenty
in the
work but not here. An illustration from Panard's
L'impromptu
du
Pont-neuf (1729),
which
appears
in
volume
7
of Le Thetre de la
Foire,
depicts
a round
dance of seven women described in the text as
flowergirls
and
fishmongers (illus.6). They
move feet
off the
ground
in
fairly undignified
form.
Gay's
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999 51
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~TmpranmpLu
di Pont- raf
f ,
. . .. . . . . .. .
6 Round dance on the
quai
of the Seine at Paris
(1729)
dance of the doxies in the French manner should
look
something
like this.
While
kissing
and
fondling
his wenches Macheath
is
betrayed by
them and seized
by
Peachum. The
scene
changes
to
Newgate
Prison,
where we meet
Lockit,
the
corrupt gaoler,
and
Lucy
his
daughter,
whom Macheath has also
married,
or so she believes.
Act
3
continues the
jail
scene.
Lucy
frees Macheath
and he
goes
to a
gaming
house,
only
to be
betrayed
by
a member of his
gang.
He is seized and returned
to
prison.
Gay
is at his
superb
best
throughout
Act
3. Lucy,
who has
already quarrelled
with
Polly
in Act
2,
begins
Act
3
scene
4
with an
opera seria-style
out-
burst
worthy
of Metastasio:
'Jealousy, Rage,
Love
and Fear are at once
tearing
me to
pieces,
How I am
weather-beaten and shatter'd with Distresses!'
Air
46
I'm like a Skiff on the Ocean
tost,
Now
high,
now
low,
with each Billow born,
With her Rudder
broke, and her Anchor
lost,
Deserted and all forlorn.
The
tune,
identified
by
its title as 'One
Evening,
having
lost
my way',
is
pleasantly pastoral,
in 6/8
time and in G
major,
without
any particularly
mem-
orable
qualities, yet Pepusch thought enough
of it to
incorporate
its second
part
in his Overture to The
Beggar's Opera.
The
quarrel
with
Polly
resumes,
which
Lucy
tries
to win
by poisoning
her rival. Both
appeal
to
Macheath in turn in Air
52.
Peachum
gives practical
advice: 'the
settling
this
point, Captain, might pre-
vent a law-suit between
your
two widows.'
Macheath,
perplexed, sings
Air
53,
'Which
way
shall
I turn me-How can I decide?'
Gay gets
a
perverse
irony
out of the situation
by setting
Macheath's
question
to a bawd's
song
'Tom Tinker's
my
true
love and I am his dear'. The sexual
ambiguity
implicit
in the choice
surely
raised a
laugh
in London
audiences of the time.
Polly
sinks to her knees
begging
her father to let
Macheath live in Air
54. Lucy
does likewise before
her father in Air
55.
This is the moment
Hogarth
chose to
paint (illus.4). Lucy
is in blue on the
left,
Polly
in white on the
right,
as
played
in the first
production by
the beautiful Lavinia Fenton
(1708-60).
Onlookers crowd the sides of the
stage
but do not obscure the
prison
set or
leering satyr.
Among
them the man seated at
right, playbook
in
hand,
looking straight
at
Polly, represents
the third
Duke of
Bolton,
who took Fenton off the
stage
for
his mistress after she had
sung
the
part
of
Polly
more than 6o
times,
and
finally
married her after
the death of his wife in
1751.
It could be said that he
failed to
get Gay's cynical message
about
marriage.
Macheath,
dressed in a red
coat,
stands in the cen-
tre of the
painting.
His
agony
stretches out over
many
more airs before
Gay
at last
brings
back the
Beggar
from the
beginning
with cries of a
reprieve.
Macheath's delirium
just
before the
reprieve,
expressed by
snatches of several airs
juxtaposed,
demonstrates a
technique
that had been
pioneered
as
early
as
1718 by Lesage.8
52
EARLY MUSIC FEBRUARY
1999
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1 For an excellent
survey recounting
the birth of the
genre
see M.
Barth&-
lemy, 'L'opera-comique
des
origines
i
la
Querelle
des Bouffons',
L'opera-
comique
en France au
xviiie si&cle,
ed.
P. Vendrix
(Liege, 1992), pp.8-78.
2 On the
primordial
role of
Lesage
see
D. Heartz,
'Terpsichore
at the fair: old
and new dance airs in two vaudeville
comedies
by Lesage',
Music and con-
text:
essays for John
M. Ward, ed. A. D.
Shapiro (Cambridge,
MA, 1985),
pp.278-3o4,
and A. Grewe, Monde
renverse--Theitre
renverse:
Lesage
und
das
Theadtre
de la Foire
(Bonn, 1989).
3 Frangois
Parfaict,
Mimoires
pour
servir a l'histoire des
spectacles
de la
Foire,
par
un
acteurforain,
2 vols.
(Paris, 1743), i,
pp.225-33.
The author
says
of
Lesage (p.163),
'on conviendra
ais6ment
que
c'est lui
qui
a,
pour
ainsi
dire, cre6 cette nouvelle
esp&e
de
Poesie Dramatique,
connue sous le
nom
d'Opera Comique.'
4
E. Dacier and A.
Vuaflart, Jean
de
Julliene
et les
graveurs
de Watteau au
xviiie siecle, 3 vols.
(Paris, 1929), i:
Notices et documents
biographiques by
J.
Herold and A.
Vuaflart,
p.96.
For a
compilation
of information on French
actors and
plays
in London see A.
Nicoll,
A
history of early eighteenth
-
century
drama
(Cambridge, 2/1929),
app.
C.
5
E. M.
Gagey,
Ballad
opera (New
York, 1937),
p.31.
The author
says
that
Gay
visited Paris in both
1717
and
1719.
6 B. H.
Bronson, 'The
Beggar's Opera',
Studies in the comic
(Berkeley, 1941),
pp.197-231.
The
essay
is
reprinted
in
B. H.
Bronson, Facets
of
the
Enlighten-
ment: studies in
English
literature and
its contexts
(Berkeley
and Los
Angeles,
1969), pp.60-90;
'Would
you
have a
young virgin'
is
quoted
on
p.63.
Bron-
son's
essay
remains a wonderful intro-
duction to
Gay's parody technique.
7 John Gay,
The
Beggar's Opera,
ed.
B.
Loughrey
and T.
O.
Treadwell
(Harmondsworth, 1986), p.74 n.24.
It
seems that the editors describe another
French dance, the
minuet, which is for
couples
and in which the feet do not
leave the floor.
8 In La Princesse de
Carizme, as
pointed
out in
Barthdlemy, 'L'op~ra-
comique
des
origines ?A
la
Querelle
des
Bouffons', p.65.
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