JOHN GAY/BENJAMIN BRITTEN: The Beggar’s Opera – Soloists/City of London Sinfonia/ Christian Curnyn, conductor – Chandos CHAN 10548(2) (2 CDs), 52:43; 65:09 **** [Distr. by Naxos]:
John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera was a London sensation when it opened in 1728, running for sixty-two performances and was revived every year until the end of the 18th Century. Gay was the work’s librettist. It contained sixty-nine popular songs: most of which were English folk ballads or songs of Irish, Scottish or French background. The remaining eighteen songs were composed by Handel, Purcell and others. The success of The Beggar’s Opera forced Handel to cease composing Italian opera, which lost traction in England due to this example of an "opera" written in its native language. The great composer created a new semi-staged format for soloists and chorus out of economic necessity, calling the format "an oratorio" and proceeded to revive his flagging career.
The story of the charismatic thief Macheath has been re-used on several occasions, most notably by Brecht and Weill in The Threepenny Opera. Benjamin Britten was attracted to the folksong format of The Beggar’s Opera and used sixty-six of the original songs, arranging them orchestrally in his own style and writing a new overture. The work was now substantially different and he felt musically justified in giving it opus number 43 in the catalog of his works. It premiered in 1948 and was given a new production in 1963. Britten’s Beggar’s Opera has rarely been performed since then and this new recording for Chandos is a welcome addition for collectors.
This work does not have the organic coherence of the best of Britten’s operas. Its collaborative history generates an amorphous quality that makes it seem more like a musical entertainment or a play with music. The libretto is abridged for this performance but seems not to have suffered a loss in dramatic impact. Britten’s musical arrangements are of the highest artistry and some of the songs are quite beautiful with a simplicity and emotional directness that is highly effective. The performances by the singers are uniformly excellent and conductor Christian Curnyn does a splendid job in providing a unified artistic vision to what could be a problematic work. The City of London Sinfonia plays a difficult score with exemplary precision and feeling. This recording makes a strong case for Britten’s version of a hoary old musical entertainment whose place in musical history cannot be overestimated.
The sound created by the Chandos engineers is clear and rich with a nice illusion of width in a virtual acoustic stage that is always solidly focused. The voices and instruments are softly reverberant lending a nice sense of depth to the recording as well. The CD made from the 24-bit/96 kH master recording has much of the clarity and power of the resultant additional dynamic range and acoustic resolution. One can only imagine how good it might have sounded in a multichannel high resolution format such as SACD or DVD-Audio.
– – Mike Birman
