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Kurt Weill’s Street Scene Now Available Worldwide from EAMC

Dec. 09, 2009

We are excited to announce that Kurt Weill's Street Scene, one of the composer's most popular and enduring music-theatre works, is now available worldwide from European American Music Corporation. Street Scene joins an already impressive list of Weill's most famous stage works available from EAM including The Threepenny Opera, Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, and The Seven Deadly Sins, as well as many other fascinating, lesser-known works.

In 1946, with several operas, music theater works, and two hit Broadway musicals under his belt, Kurt Weill set out to write a "Broadway opera" based on Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Street Scene. With Rice adapting his play and the great American poet Langston Hughes penning the lyrics, Weill composed a score that blends operatic arias and ensembles, show tunes and dance numbers, jazz and blues, and dramatic dialogue. The resulting opera is a passionate, emotionally charged portrait of family and communal life among the multi-ethnic working-class and immigrant inhabitants of a crowded New York City tenement. Centered around the life-changing events of one oppressively hot summer day, Street Scene illuminates the tensions, despair, hopes, and dreams of this melting-pot community.

Street Scene premiered on Broadway in 1947 to critical acclaim, winning Weill the first ever Tony Award for Best Original Score. Today, Street Scene is most frequently performed in opera houses, though its receipt of the 2008 Evening Standard Award for Best Musical (for the Opera Group's production at the Young Vic in London) gives evidence to its continuing appeal to opera and musical theater audiences alike. Notable American performances have included productions by New York City Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and Houston Grand Opera. The Houston production, directed by Francesca Zambello and conducted by James Holmes, travelled to Germany in 1994-95 and was filmed for television and DVD release (Image Entertainment). Currently, Street Scene is being performed in Germany at Theater Hagen, and soon it will enjoy its French premiere at Opéra de Toulon in March 2010. Looking ahead to the 2010-11 season, it will appear at the Semperoper in Dresden.

A rich, rewarding tale... transformed into music that could be troubled, poignant, sleazy, jazzily laid back, exhausted, shattered, Wagnerian, Pucciniesque and more. For its texture, its boldness, its everything, Street Scene... was the clear winner of the Best Musical award.
- Evening Standard, 2008

Visit www.kwf.org to learn more on the life and music of Kurt Weill.

Kurt Weill
Street Scene (1946)
an American opera in two acts
book (En) by Elmer Rice; lyrics (En) by Langston Hughes and Elmer Rice
based on the play Street Scene by Elmer Rice
singing roles: Anna Maurrant (dramatic soprano), Frank Maurrant, (bass-baritone), Willie Maurrant (boy soprano), Rose Maurrant (lyric soprano), Sam Kaplan (tenor), Abraham Kaplan (tenor buffo), Harry Easter (Broadway baritone), Henry Davis (baritone), Lippo Fiorentino (tenor), George Jones (baritone), Carl Olsen (bass), Mrs. Fiorentino (coloratura soprano), Mrs. Jones (mezzo-soprano), Mrs. Olsen (alto), Daniel Buchanan (buffo tenor), Jenny Hildebrand (soprano), 2nd graduate (soprano), 3rd graduate (mezzo-soprano), Mrs. Hildebrand (mezzo-soprano), Nursemaids (soprano, mezzo-soprano), three children, Dick McGann (singer-dancer), Mae Jones (singer-dancer); speaking roles: Mrs. Jones, Steve Sankey, Shirley Kaplan, Vincent Jones, Dr. Wilson, Officer Murphy, city marshall, Fred Cullen, milkman, policeman, old clothes man, intern, ambulance driver, married couple, passerby, neighbors, children
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full evening

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