Uh, hate to mention it, but Polly Peachum isn’t American. She isn’t real, either. She’s the lead female character in the English writer John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, later adapted by Brecht and Weill—Germans—as Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). The painting is by one of the most popular English painters of the Victorian era. Unfortunately for Melcher, there’s no joke here—just a display of shiftless ignorance.
Uh, hate to mention it, but Polly Peachum isn’t American. She isn’t real, either. She’s the lead female character in the English writer John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, later adapted by Brecht and Weill—Germans—as Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). The painting is by one of the most popular English painters of the Victorian era. Unfortunately for Melcher, there’s no joke here—just a display of shiftless ignorance.