A huge success at its first performance in 1728 John Gay's The Beggar's Opera satirized the conventions of Italian opera, using popular tunes to tell the story of rogues and criminals. With his distinctive musical arrangements at its heart, Britten's 1948 adaptation was a significant revision, amounting to a new twentieth-century opera. The BBC film, originally broadcast in 1963, feature a superb cast of English singers..
as The Beggar
as The Manager of the Company/Mat of the Mint
as The Stage Manager/Slippery Sam
as Peachum
as Filch/Wat Dreary
as Mrs. Peachum
as Polly Peachum
as Captain Macheath
as Lockit
as Lucy Lockit
as Mrs. Trapes
as Jenny Diver
as Ben Budge
as Tom Tipple
as Crook-finger'd Jack
as Harry Paddington
as Mrs. Coaxer
as Dolly Trull
as Mrs. Vixen
as Betty Doxy
as Mrs Slammekin
as Suky Tawdry
as Molly Brazen
