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It’s Freddie who, in 1975, decides that Queen will defy formula and craft a new musical masterpiece that fuses ballad, opera and rock inspirations into an ear-tickling, genre-melding opus for the ages.

This small-scale production, by the European Opera Centre and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, presented the only UK performance of Britten's witty re-orchestration of John Gay's 18th-century ballad opera scheduled this year.

The story was made into a pantomime by Theophilus Cibber, and by some one else into a ballad opera; and it gave rise to numerous pamphlets and poems.

New elements of music and clowning change his lugubrious didacticism to a lyrical warning in a form I call "morality ballad opera."

Moreover, these two dramas underscore the importance of music in eighteenth century theater where the use of songs in pantomimes and new lyrics for old tunes in ballad opera were alike commonplace by mid-century.