Had no idea what this was. Did not even know I had it. Came across it tucked into a sleeve behind another disc, among some other stuff a chum Mark had given me some time ago. Since there was no information notes I was not sure what it was all about. It being a l;ate night tidy up I decided to stick it in the player, see what came up. And I was spellbound, transfixed by the beautiful sounds coming from my speakers, Sweet voices, like spring lambs gambling fluttered about the room, transforming a late night in Belfast to an Opera house.The story and escpecially the staging had many similarities with Don Quixote. A man inn a desperate situation, in a dungeon facing a grim fate finds himself singing for his supper, which is to say his life. A highway man, a dashing rogue, is to be hung at Tyburn but a beggar who has written an opera about his life rewrites his destiny, possibly. It was the surprise of finding such a beautiful thing that kept me from my mattress.
As an older man I find I spend alot of my spare thinking time hoping to stumble across resources in art, in music, in cinema, in books that feel as exciting as my discovery of the Sex Pistols felt way back in the day. Something, anything which embodies a type of cultural subversion, a punk spirit, and The Beggar's Opera had it. What a find. What a joy. It really was Like discovering a field of spring lambs dancing and leaping in the sun for the very joy off it.
