The Beggar's Opera piece satirised Italian opera, which had become popular in London. According to "The New York Times": "Gay wrote the work more as an anti-opera than an opera, one of its attractions to its 18th-century London public being its lampooning of the Italian opera style and the English public's fascination with it." Instead of the grand music and themes of opera, the work uses familiar tunes and characters that were ordinary people. Some of the songs were by opera composers like Handel, but only the most popular of these were used. The audience could hum along with the music and identify
Music in Berlin music theory and criticism in the 18th century with leading figures like Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Johann Philipp Kirnberger, Quantz, and C. P. E. Bach whose treatises were being read all over Europe. Later on, writers like Reichardt, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Ludwig Rellstab, and A. B. Marx contributed to what can arguably be called the origins of German Music Feuilleton, whilst Adolf Martin Schlesinger founded one of the leading German music publishing houses. Berlin has three major opera houses: the Deutsche Oper, the Berlin State Opera, and the Komische Oper. The Berlin State Opera on Unter den Linden is the