The Beggar's Opera is a
ballad opera in three acts written in 1728 by
John Gay with music arranged by
Johann Christoph Pepusch. It is one of the watershed plays in
Augustan drama and is the only example of the once thriving genre of satirical ballad opera to remain popular today. Ballad operas were
satiric musical plays that used some of the conventions of opera, but without
recitative. The lyrics of the airs in the piece are set to popular broadsheet ballads, opera arias, church hymns and folk tunes of the time.