I watched a film version of The Beggar's Opera (1728) by John Gay. The film dates from 1953, and the cast includes Laurence Olivier, Dorothy Tutin, Stanley Holloway, Miles Malleson, Athene Seyler and others. The acting was brilliant. However the heavy-handed reworking of the music by Sir Arthur Bliss is pretty much a product of the time.
The plot is based on two criminals from 1720s London; Jonathan Wild and Jack Sheppard. The audience of Gay's time would have also recognised the Prime Minister, Walpole, in the part of MacHeath (Sheppard), and understood the implied criminality of those who ruled. Here is Hogarth's painting of a scene from the opera:
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