The Beggar’s Opera
Linbury Studio
The Magic Flute
Coliseum
Is there any good reason for reviving The Beggar’s Opera now? None of the mercifully few productions I have seen has given any reason for answering yes (I don’t count The Threepenny Opera). The new production at the Royal Opera’s Linbury Studio emphatically doesn’t. Originally to have been conducted by Richard Hickox, the City of London Sinfonia was in the hands of Christian Curnyn, and on the musical side things went smoothly. It was done in Britten’s realisation, which has points in its favour, but several against, too. While his touch as an arranger was always sure, though more so in the wonderful folk songs than here, he didn’t get the measure of the work’s satirical content: the 12-piece orchestra makes delightful but genteel contributions to the proceedings. Raunchiness wasn’t in Britten’s make-up, and to give Beggar’s Opera the punch it needs if it’s to count as an effective piece now, that’s what it has got to have.
The staging is clever, if unnecessarily complicated. As one clambers down the Linbury’s staircases, one sees, on the left, parts of three tiers from the main house, with the performers in the lower two, dummies (of one kind and another) in the top one. They give way to the acting area, which has a row of chilled-drink dispensing machines, which easily convert into the red lights of Soho. The setting and the costumes are updated, but the text isn’t: and while we may have got used to that in the Ring, it proves to be harder to swallow with this earthy lot of tarts and tricksters. What makes it worse is that the performers are as bad at speaking as operatic singers almost always are.
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