Orchestra/Chorusteatroreal - Kurt Weill's Street Scene (An American Opera in two acts (1947))

Kurt Weill wrote Street Scene shortly after fleeing Nazi Germany to the United States. When he discovered the vitality of the American musical scene, his focus became to reconcile the Broadway �musical� with European traditional opera, jazzy and North-American tunes with an almost Puccinian-like lyricism. In his mind, opera had to embrace and reclaim its own theatricality: thus he wrote his Street Scene, 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 (recipient of the Pulitzer Price when it was published in 1928). Under Tim Murray�s vivid and precise baton, this superb production by John Fulljames perfectly renders the vitality and energy released by the streets of New York that proved to be a great inspiration to the theatrical mind of the composer.