Street Scene (opera)

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This article is about Street Scene, a Broadway musical; for other meanings, see Street Scene (disambiguation).

Street Scene is a Broadway musical or, more precisely, an "American opera" by Kurt Weill (music), Langston Hughes (lyrics), and Elmer Rice (book), based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name by Rice.

It was Weill who chose the Rice's naturalistic play as prime material for his foray into the "new musical theater." 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." (Sanders, p 348).

The original production was directed by Charles Friedman and produced by Dwight Deere Wiman and The Playwrights' Company (Maxwell Anderson; S.N. Behrman; Elmer Rice; Robert E. Sherwood; Sidney Howard). The scenic and lighting design were by Jo Mielziner and the costume design was by Lucinda Ballard. The production opened on Broadway at the Adelphi Theater on January 9, 1947. It closed on May 17 of the same year after having played 148 performances. For his work on Street Scene Weill was awarded the very first Tony Award for Best Original Score, [1] competing with other musicals that year such as Finian's Rainbow by Burton Lane and Brigadoon by Frederick Loewe.

Weill referred to his piece as an "American opera" or a "Broadway opera." It was meant to be a synthesis of European traditional opera and American musical theater. The score is almost entirely sung, and the piece is now frequently produced by opera companies.

There are opera arias and ensembles (some of them with obvious links and references to the style of Puccini), such as Anna Maurrant's "Somehow I never could believe" and Frank Maurrant's "Let things be like they always was". Some of the more identifiably Broadway-style "numbers" include "Ain't It Awful," "A Marble and a Star," "Wrapped In a Ribbon and Tied in a Bow," "Wouldn't You Like to Be on Broadway?", "Moon-Faced, Starry-Eyed," and "What Good Would the Moon Be?"