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Organization

Singer

Baritone

Geoffrey Dolton

Abraham Kaplan

Soprano

Jeni Bern

Greta Florentino

Bass-baritone

Scott Wilde

Mr Carl Olsen

Mezzo-soprano

Lucy Schaufer

Emma Jones

Harriet Williams

Mrs. Olga Olsen

Eric Greene

Henry Davis

Mandisinde Mbuyanzwe

Patricia Racette

Mrs Anna Maurrant

Tenor

Joel Prieto

Sam Kaplan

Tyler Clarke

Daniel Buchanan

Paulo Szot

Frank Mourrant

Gerardo Bullón

Mr George Jones

Michael J Scott

Lippo Fiorentino

Vicente Ombuena

Marta Fontanals-Simmons

Jenny Hildebrand

Katie Coventry

Mary Bevan

Rose Mourrant

Richard Burkhard

Harry Easter

Marcus Farnsworth

Sarah-Marie Maxell

Mae Jones

1. Kindermädchen

Dominic Lamb

Dick McGann

Laurel Dougall

2. Kindermädchen

Conductor

Tim Murray

Stage director

John Fulljames

Set designer

Dick Bird

Costume designer

Lighting designer

James Farncombe

Sound designer

Poti Martín

Choreographer

Arthur Pita

Chorus master

Andrés Máspero

Ana González

Teatro Real de Madrid

Street Scene

Madrid

Spain

Teatro Real

Street Scene is an American opera by Kurt Weill (music), Langston Hughes (lyrics), and Elmer Rice (book). Written in 1946 and premiered in Philadelphia that year, Street Scene is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play of the same name by Rice.

It was Weill who referred to the piece as an "American opera", intending it as a groundbreaking synthesis of European traditional opera and American musical theater. He received the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score for his work, after the Broadway premiere in 1947. Considered far more an opera than a musical, Street Scene is regularly produced by professional opera companies and has never been revived on Broadway. Musically and culturally, even dramatically, the work inhabits the mid-ground between Weill's Threepenny Opera (1928) and Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story (1957).

The score contains operatic arias and ensembles, some of them, such as Anna Maurrant's "Somehow I Never Could Believe" and Frank Maurrant's "Let Things Be Like They Always Was", with links and references to the style of Giacomo Puccini. It also has jazz and blues influences in "I Got a Marble and a Star" and "Lonely House". Some of the more Broadway-style musical numbers are "Wrapped in a Ribbon and Tied in a Bow", "Wouldn't You Like to Be on Broadway?" and "Moon-faced, Starry-eyed", an extended song-and-dance sequence. Benny Goodman and His Orchestra recorded "Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed" with Johnny Mercer on the vocal in 1947. It was also recorded by the jazz vocal group The Hi-Lo's for their 1958 Columbia LP And All That Jazz.

Kurt Weill wrote Street Scene after fleeing Nazi Germany, meant to be a truly American opera, half-way between his Brechtian Threepenny’s Opera and Bernstein’s later West Side Story and drawing from the famous play by Elmer Rice. Under Tim Murray’s baton, this superb production by John Fulljames perfectly renders the vitality and energy released by the streets of New York, which proved to be a great inspiration to the theatrical mind of the composer.

A tenement on the East Side of Manhattan is our window into a multitude of precarious lives pushed to the limits. Romance, disputes, gossip mongering, betrayals, and constant tension mark the routines of this community of neighbors in the socially conscious Street Scene, the first opera Kurt Weill composed in the United States after escaping Nazi persecution. The brilliance of the music complements a sparkling libretto by Elmer Rice—an adaptation of his Pulitzer-winning play of the same name—and lyrics by legendary Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes.

Weill sought to write an “American opera” drawing on Broadway musicals, blues, and jazz, all with an eye toward the European operatic tradition—recitatives, arias, ensemble—in which he had been immersed before crossing the Atlantic. The final product lies somewhere between Weill’s Threepenny Opera (a collaboration with Brecht and the origin of the famous “Mack the Knife”) and Bernstein’s West Side Story: a masterful depiction of everyday life in a big city, brutally realistic but with a refined poetic sensibility.

Under Tim Murray’s precise baton, this new production by John Fulljames, featuring a top-notch vocal cast, vividly renders the vitality and energy of the New York streets that inspired Weill’s brilliant theatrical mind.

Street Scene, American opera in two acts by Kurt Weill (1900 - 1950)
Libretto by Elmer Rice after his own play, lyrics by Langston Hugues and Elmer Rice
First performance in Philadelphia, Shubert Theatre, 16 December 1946

Street Scene Weill

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