A huge success at its first performances in 1728, John Gay"s The Beggar"s Opera satirised the conventions of Italian opera, using popular tunes to tell the story of rogues and criminals. With his distinctive musical arrangements at its heart, Britten"s 1948 adaptation was a significant revision, amounting to a new twentieth-century opera. This BBC film, originally broadcast in 1963, features a superb cast of English singers, including the much-loved Scottish tenor Kenneth McKellar as the highwayman Macheath, and Janet Baker as Polly Peachum. Opera In Three Acts The Beggar - Roger Jerome Peachum- David Kelly Filch - Bernard Dickerson Mrs. Peachum - Anna Pollak Polly Peachum - Janet Baker Macheath - Kenneth McKellar Lockit - Bryan Drake Lucy Lockit - Heather Harper Роджерс Чарльз