A STAGE ROMANCE

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 25, 30 January 1930, Page 18

A STAGE ROMANCE

"THE BEGGAR'S OPERA"

HISTORY MADE BY ACCIDENT

Fifty-fifty writers have been urging a revival of "The Beggar's Opera"—the brightest gem of English ballad music. As interesting as the opera itself, the story, of its writing, its first presentation, and the, people who were in it, makes one of the most absorbing romances in stage history, says a writer in the "Sun News Pictorial."

When the curtain went up at the Theatre Royal in Lincoln's Inn Fields one January night two hundred years ago, the veil was lifted on a new era of popular music. All unknowingly, John Gay set a fashion that night that was to influence English music for a century or more. Gay wrote "Tho Beggar's Opera" blindly. He strove for a literary suc^ cess; he achieved a musical triumph. The old folk songs and traditional airs ho used for his lyrics had so much inherent sweetness that they drove out of England for a season the artificial Italian opera then so much in vogue.

TOUCH AND GO SUCCESS.

Yet tho success of Gay's opera was only touch and go. A series of happy accidents bore it on to triumph. Colly Gibber refused the piece, and Gay was much put down. With only luke-warm enthusiasm Christopher Rich agreed to put it on. He had no time for singing actors. The novelty of the setting was what appealed to him. Polly Peachuin and Lucy Lockit, not nice1 girls to say the least, Gay made his heroines. % It was a novelty, certainly. It was almost too novel.. The audience that first night, accustomed to rigid stage traditions, seldom departed from, did not like the experiment, and viewed it coldly at first Then a happy accident swung tho audience in his favour. Certain lines in the piece were taken as referring to Sir Kobert Walpole, then most unpopular, who sat there in the audience

smiling far too unconcernedly for tho shot to have missed. Gay probably never intended the allusion. That was tho first hit.

Next the lovely Lavinia Fenton, chosen with misgivings, then almost unknown, and playing her first—and last big part, brought tears to the eyes of the first-night fops with her sensational singing of one ballad. That was hit number two.

Still tho pieco hung fire until the dashing entrance of Tom Walker, playing the highwayman, Macbcath, a popular fellow portraying a popular type, for gentlemen robbers have had their romantic side from Robin Hood down. Walker swung the scale to triumph. Next morning Gay was famous, and Lavinia Fenton was the toast of the town.

ALL LONDON AT HEE PEET.

Of them all, Lavinia Fcnton is the most radiant figure in the story of "The Beggar's Opera." To her went most of the romance. Her brief career before the public was unique. No other actress over achieved such instant triumph. London, overnight, was at her feet.

v Like Nellie Gwynn, she was of doubtful birth, but unlike Noll, while always gracious, she wore a decorous dignity that no scandal ever dlung to. She left the stage as. dramatically as she had baken it by storm.

She left it under the distinguished protection of George, Duke of-Bolton, and later became his Duchess. ' Years after, when she died, honoured and well beloved, they knew her only by one name —and that was Polly Peachuin.

Such was the original triumph of "The Beggar's Opera." Might not a revival now, in happier circumstances than the last, be memorable, too? Playa like this will save the stage.