Beggar's Holiday

Beggar's Holiday
Beggar's Holiday presented by Opera Theater of Pittsburgh
Music	Duke Ellington
Lyrics	John La Touche
Book	John La Touche
Basis	The Beggar's Opera by John Gay
Productions	1946 Broadway 2004 Mill Valley, California 2012 Paris, France

Beggar's Holiday is a musical with a book and lyrics by John La Touche and music by Duke Ellington.

An updated version of The Beggar's Opera by John Gay, it focuses on a corrupt world inhabited by rakish mobsters and their double crossing gangs, raffish madams and their dissolute whores, panhandlers and street people as they conduct their dirty business, ply their trade, and struggle to survive in brothels, shanty towns, and prisons.

The Broadway production, directed by Nicholas Ray and choreographed by Valerie Bettis, opened on December 26, 1946 at The Broadway Theatre, where it ran for 111 performances. The cast included Alfred Drake, Zero Mostel, Thomas Gomez, Avon Long, and Herbert Ross. Beggar's Holiday, Ellington's only book musical, included an interracial relationship resulting in nightly picketing outside the theater.

No cast album was recorded, but a demo tape was discovered and released, together with the score from the West End musical Bet Your Life featuring Julie Wilson and Sally Ann Howes, on an LP on the Blue Pear label [1]. Lena Horne's recording of "Tomorrow Mountain," the show's first-act closer, was a hit.