Offer,Kurt Weill: Street Scene

Patricia Racette (Anna Maurrant), Paulo Szot (Frank Maurrant), Mary Bevan (Rose Maurrant), Jeni Bern (Greta Fiorentino), Lucy Schaufer (Emma Jones), Joel Prieto (Sam Kaplan), Michael J. Scott (Lippo Fiorentino), Tyler Clarke (Daniel Buchanan), Marta Fontanals-Simmons (Jennie Hildebrand), Eric Greene...

An excellent cast and illuminating production make the strongest case possible for Weill’s powerful score. — MusicWeb International, April 2020 More…

Release Date: 22nd Nov 2019
Catalogue No: BAC162
Label: Bel Air Classiques

International Opera Awards

2020

Nomianted - Complete Opera Recording

Weill, K: Street Scene

Patricia Racette (Anna Maurrant), Paulo Szot (Frank Maurrant), Mary Bevan (Rose Maurrant), Jeni Bern (Greta Fiorentino), Lucy Schaufer (Emma Jones), Joel Prieto (Sam Kaplan), Michael J. Scott (Lippo Fiorentino), Tyler Clarke (Daniel Buchanan), Marta Fontanals-Simmons (Jennie Hildebrand), Eric Greene (Henry Davis), Richard Burkhard (Harry Easter), Sarah-Marie Maxwell (Mae Jones) & Dominic Lamb (Dick McGann)
Pequenos y Jovenes Cantores de la JORCAM & Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Real de Madrid
Tim Murray (conductor) & John Fulljames (stage direction)

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Set and Costume Design: Dick Bird

Lighting Design: James Farncombe

Choreography: Arthur Pita

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 Threepennys Opera and Bernsteins 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 Murrays 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.

HD recording: Teatro Real, Madrid | 02/2018

TV direction: Jérémie Cuvillier

Running time: 160 min.

Booklet: FR / ENG / SPA

Original language: ENG

Subtitles: FR / ENG / GER / SPA / JP / KOR

Video: Colour, 16/9, NTSC

Audio: PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1

Artists

Pequenos y Jovenes Cantores de la JORCAM & Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Real de Madrid, Tim Murray (conductor) & John Fulljames (stage direction)

Reviews

April 2020

An excellent cast and illuminating production make the strongest case possible for Weill’s powerful score.

February 2020

New York’s stifling heat, poverty and flyblown claustrophobia are strongly conveyed by Dick Bird’s design…Racette gives Anna the works, and though her powerful lyric soprano may spread a little more than it once did, the massive concentration of her performance holds everything together… The plethora of accents among the ensemble players nicely emphasizes the ‘melting pot’ aspect of communal life, aided by JORCAM’s bright-eyed child performers and clean-cut interventions from the Teatro Real chorus.

Opera Now February 2020

[Director John Fulljames] He pulls out all of the strands and highlights each character, but places them against the larger scale of the neighborhood, and the cast acts, sings and dances its collective socks off. Patricia Racette and Paulo Szot are intense as the warring Maurrants: daughter Mary Bevan shows mettle and has some melting duets with her suitor, the romantic Joel Prieto. But ultimately it is an ensemble piece and there isn’t a weak link here. Tim Murray’s conducting helps pull it all together, ranging from torch song to jitterbug to chorus.

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Offer,Kurt Weill: Street Scene

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