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.Tony Award for Best Original Score. Considered far more an opera than a musical,"Street Scene in a nutshell", Opera North, November 28, 2019 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" (see image). 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.
Background In Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Weill had already begun to use American jazz and popular song elements in his operas. After fleeing from Nazi Germany in 1933, he worked in Paris, then England, and then, beginning in 1935, in New York. He made a study of American popular and stage music and worked to further adapt his music to new American styles in his writing for Broadway, film and radio. He strove to find a new way of creating an American opera that would be successful both commercially and artistically.Thuleen, Nancy, "Realism in Language and Music: Kurt Weill's Street Scene". May 1997, accessed May 4, 2008. Weill wrote: It's my opinion that we can and will develop a musical-dramatic form in this country (America) but I don't think it will be called 'opera', or that it will grow out of the opera which has become a thing separate from the commercial theater, dependent upon other means than box-office appeal for its continuance. It will develop from and remain a part of the American theater – 'Broadway' theater, if you like. More than anything else, I want to be a part in that development.
Weill sought to create musical theatre that would "integrate drama and music, spoken word, song, and movement." He further wrote: This form of theater has its special attraction for the composer, because it allows him to use a great variety of musical idioms, to write music that is both serious and light, operatic and popular, emotional and sophisticated, orchestral and vocal. Each show of this type has to create its own style, its own texture, its own relationship between words and music, because music becomes a truly integral part of the play – it helps deepen the emotions and clarify the structure.Quoted in Graziano, John. "Musical Dialects in Down in the Valley", A New Orpheus: Essays on Kurt Weill, ed. Kim H. Kowalke (1986), New Haven: Yale University Press, p. 299.
Weill saw Rice's naturalistic play in 1930 and wanted to adapt it. As he wrote: It was a simple story of everyday life in a big city, a story of love and passion and greed and death. I saw great musical possibilities in its theatrical device – life in a tenement house between one evening and the next afternoon. And it seemed like a great challenge to me to find the inherent poetry in these people and to blend my music with the stark realism of the play."
In 1936, Weill met Rice in New York and suggested the adaptation, but Rice turned him down. After the successes of Weill's Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938, Lady in the Dark in 1940, and One Touch of Venus in 1943 (and after Weill had composed incidental music for Rice's Two on an Island in 1939), Weill asked again, and Rice agreed. The two chose Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes to "lift the everyday language of the people into a simple, unsophisticated poetry", as Weill put it.Quoted, in program notes by Jane Vial Jaffe, May 2008, Manhattan School of Music and Chautauqua Opera production of Street Scene.
In order to enhance the realism of the new work, the collaborators utilized dialogue scenes, sometimes underscored by music. To create music that would portray the ethnic melting pot of characters described in Rice's book, Weill travelled to neighborhoods in New York, watching children at play and observing New Yorkers. Hughes took Weill to Harlem nightclubs to hear the newest musical idioms of black American jazz and blues. Hughes wrote: "The resulting song was composed in a national American Negro idiom; but a German, or someone else, could sing it without sounding strange or out of place." Weill and many critics have considered the score to be his masterpiece.
Production history
After a tryout in Philadelphia at the Shubert Theatre, which opened Monday, December 16, 1946,The Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday, December 17, 1946, p. 27. revisions were made, and Street Scene opened on Broadway at the Adelphi Theatre on January 9, 1947. It closed on May 17, 1947, after 148 performances, experiencing high running costs. The production was directed by Charles Friedman, with choreography by Anna Sokolow, and produced by Dwight Deere Wiman and the Playwrights' Company (Maxwell Anderson; S. N. Behrman; Elmer Rice; Robert E. Sherwood; Sidney Howard). Scenic and lighting design were by Jo Mielziner; costume design was by Lucinda Ballard. The production starred Anne Jeffreys as Rose Maurrant, Polyna Stoska as Anna Maurrant, Norman Cordon as Frank Maurrant, Brian Sullivan as Sam Kaplan, Hope Emerson as Emma Jones, Sheila Bond as Mae Jones, and Danny Daniels as Dick McGann. Weill received the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score, and Ballard received the 1947 Tony Award for Best Costume Design, competing with other strong musicals that year, notably Finian's Rainbow by Burton Lane and Brigadoon by Frederick Loewe. The New York City Opera revived Street Scene several times, notably in 1959, 1979, and 1990."Review/Opera; Street Scene, Kurt Weill's Personal American Dream" by Allan Kozinn, The New York Times, September 9, 1990
The British premiere was a one-night only charity performance at the Palace Theatre in London on Sunday 26 April 1987. The show featured a starry cast of principals and walk-ons, including Rosemary Ashe, Maria Friedman, Alec McCowen, Matt Zimmerman, Kevin Colson, Steven Berkoff and Elaine Paige.Theatre Programme: "Street Scene". Palace Theatre, London, 26 April 1987. A production by the English National Opera at the London Coliseum Theatre in 1989 included Catherine Zeta-Jones as Mae Jones."Catherine Zeta Jones biography", BBC Wales, 2010; It was staged by the Minneapolis-based Minnesota Opera in 2001. Dicapo Opera staged the work in 2002 at the St. Jean Baptiste Church at Lexington Avenue and 76th Street in Manhattan."Review" (Dicapo Opera 2002), Elyse Sommer, CurtainUp.com
The Opera Group, Young Vic, and Watford Palace Theatre gave the first UK production in 20 years in July 2008,"Young Vic London's new season to include Kurt Weill musical" by Lalayn Baluch, The Stage, June 4, 2008 winning the Evening Standard Award 2008 for Best Musical. Another production was performed in the grounds of the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich on July 19, 2008, with the cast largely drawn from students from Trinity College of Music. In 2011, Street Scene was performed by the Opera/Music Theatre Workshop of Southeastern Louisiana University at the Pottle Music Auditorium, (Print article differs significantly from online press release.) and, in German, by the Bayerische Theaterakademie August Everding and the Munich Radio Orchestra, led by Ulf Schirmer."Street Scene, 11 February 2011 Munich production details", Schott Music
The Semper Oper in Dresden produced the work in June 2011,"Street Scene, 19 June 2011 Dresden production details", Schott Music and The Opera Group presented the first performance in Austria in October that year. The first performance in Spain was in March 2013, at the Gran Teatre del Liceu"Street Scene", Gran Teatre del Liceu, March 2013. and in 2018 at Teatro Real.
A production by Opera North that opened at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, in January 2020 was favourably reviewed; it ran there until 28 February then went on tour; a Leeds performance was recorded and broadcast by BBC Radio 3 on 11 April 2020.
Roles +RoleVoice typePremiere cast, 9 January 1947Conductor: Maurice AbravanelMaurrant familyFrank Maurrant, a stage hand, emotionally abusivebass-baritoneNorman CordonAnna Maurrant, his gentle, kind wifedramatic sopranoPolyna StoskaRose Maurrant, their 20-year-old daughter, working in an insurance officelyric sopranoAnne JeffreysWillie Maurrant, their mischievous little boychild, non singingPeter GriffithJones familyEmma Jones, a gossipy neighbormezzo-sopranoHope EmersonGeorge Jones, her alcoholic husbandbaritoneDavid E. ThomasMae Jones, their free spirited teenage daughtermezzo-sopranoSheila BondVincent Jones, her thuggish elder brother, a cab driverspeaking roleRobert PiersonOlsen familyOlga Olsen, a Swedish neighborcontraltoEllen ReppCarl Olsen, her husbandbassWilson SmithKaplan familyAbraham Kaplan, a radically opinioned elderly Jewish manbaritoneIrving KaufmanSam Kaplan, his son, 19 years old, a recent college graduatetenorBrian SullivanShirley Kaplan, his elder sister, a school teacherspeaking roleNorma ChambersFiorentino familyGreta Fiorentino, a German neighborcoloratura sopranoHelen ArdenLippo Fiorentino, her Italian husband, a violinisttenorSydney RainerHildebrand familyLaura Hildebrand, a struggling single motherspeaking roleElen LaneJennie Hildebrand, her teenage daughtermezzo-sopranoBeverly JanisCharlie Hildebrand, her young boychildBennett BurrillMary Hildebrand, her little girlchildJuliana GallagherOther residentsDaniel Buchanan, an expectant fathertenorRemo LotaHenry Davis, the janitorbaritoneCreighton ThompsonGrace Davis, his little girlchildHelen FergusonVisitors to the houseDick McGann, a romantic interest of Mae JonesbaritoneDanny DanielsHarry Easter, Rose Maurrant's sleazy bossbaritoneDon SaxonSteve Sankey, a milkman, supposedly having an affair with Anna Maurrantspeaking roleLauren GilbertNursemaid #1, a young nursemaidlyric altoPeggy TurnleyNursemaid #2, another young nursemaidcontraltoEllen CarleenDr. John Wilson, the doctor for Daniel Buchanan's pregnant wifespeaking roleEdwin G. O'ConnorOfficer Harry Murphy, a policemanspeaking roleNorman ThomsonJames Henry, City Marshallspeaking roleRandolphe SymonetteFred Cullen, his assistantspeaking rolePaul LilyAn Ambulance Driverspeaking rolePassers-by, children, chorus
Synopsis
Summary The opera takes place on the doorstep of a tenement on the East Side of Manhattan on two brutally hot days in 1946. The story focuses on two plotlines: the romance between Rose Maurrant and her neighbor Sam Kaplan; and on the extramarital affair of Rose's mother, Anna, which is eventually discovered by Rose's irritable father, Frank. The show portrays the ordinary romances, squabbles and gossips of the neighbors, as the mounting tensions involving the Maurrant family eventually build into a tragedy of epic proportions.
Act 1