Street Scene
Time and Location
- 2023, Apr 14 Performing Arts Center 282 - Mainstage
- 2023, Apr 15 Performing Arts Center 282 - Mainstage
- 2023, Apr 16 Performing Arts Center 282 - Mainstage
Disability Accommodations
For disability accommodations, please contact the department presenting the event. Disability access information is available online at Parking Services, and further resources can be found by contacting Western's Disability Access Center.
Music by Kurt Weill
Lyrics by Langston Hughes
Book by Elmer Rice
Director
Heather Dudenbostel
Music Director
Mark Davies
Conductor
Ryan Dudenbostel
About the production
The departments of Music and Theatre & Dance present the American opera Street Scene with music by Kurt Weill and lyrics by Langston Hughes and will feature the Western Symphony Orchestra.
Kurt Weill conceived of "Street Scene" as a groundbreaking synthesis of European traditional opera and American musical theater. 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). Weill received the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score for his work, after the Broadway premiere in 1947.
At the heart of the tale is the Maurrant family whose tragic story is contrasted throughout the opera with moments of humor, joy, and hope.
Based on Elmer Rice's Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name, the plot centers around the conflicts and entanglements between residents of a New York City tenement building in the heat of summer in the 1940s.
