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That same year, he directed his first film, “The Beggar’s Opera,” the rare musical to star Olivier.

Plays to be played—'The Beau's Stratagem,' 'Beggar's Opera,' 'The Devil to Pay,' 'The Fair Penitent,' 'The Virgin Unmasked!' and a variety of farces and merry pantomimes—and the bills are only a penny, my lady!

But the great success attending revivals of the ‘Beggar’s Opera,’ the ‘Merry Wives of Windsor,’ and other pieces, added to the subsequent still greater success of Boucicault’s ‘London Assurance,’ induced the lessee to continue the management.

The admirable moralist and poet, Gay, was also educated in this school; he was the composer of "The Beggar's Opera," the notion of which appears to have been afforded by Swift.

Photograph: Adam Wiltshire The most popular of operas in 18th-century England, even eclipsing the success of John Gay's Beggar's Opera, The Duenna was Richard Brinsley Sheridan's only foray into musical theatre, supplying the text for which the Linleys of Bath, father and son, both called Thomas, composed the music.