Street Scene (2011)

Information on the Production

University News Service writes:

Posted by Jayme Blaschke
University News Service
March 18, 2011

SAN MARCOS – The Opera Theatre at Texas State University-San Marcos will present the first American opera, Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, April 1-3 in Evans Auditorium.

Performances will be 7:30 p.m. April 1-2, with a 2 p.m. matinee April 3. Advance tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for seniors and students. Prices are $11 and $6 at the door.

Weill, a German-Jewish composer who fled the Nazi regime in the 1930s, enticed Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes to script the everyday language of people of Depression-era New York City for the opera, marking the first time in the history of Broadway that had a black man put words into the mouths of white characters. Opening on Broadway in 1947, this groundbreaking opera earned Weill the very first Tony Award for Best Original Score.

The story follows the lives of four characters in a tenement house and focuses on two plots: the romance between Rose and her neighbor Sam and the marital affair of Rose’s mother, Anna, which is eventually discovered by her volatile husband, Frank. The show portrays the ordinary romances, squabbles and gossip of the neighbors, as the mounting tensions involving the family eventually build into a tragedy of epic proportions.