Street Scene

The doorstep of a tenement on the East Side of New York is the setting for a multitude of precarious lives and situations, all too often pushed to the limits. Romance, disputes, gossip mongering, betrayals and constant tension mark the routines of this community of neighbours, making Street Scene a work with an important degree of social protest. Besides, this was the first opera that Kurt Weill composed after he arrived in the United States, having fled from Nazi persecution. Prestigious dramaturg, Elmer Rice wrote the libretto based on his play by the same name, this had already met with great success and had won the Pulitzer Prize in 1929.

Weill's score combined the essence of Broadway Musicals and North American jazz, without forgetting the traditional European opera - recitatives, arias, ensemble - in which he had been immersed before crossing the Atlantic to never look back. Together, Weill and Rice achieved a work about everyday life in a big city that was brutally realistic but that also communicated a great sense of poetry. 

New production by the Teatro Real, in co-production with the Opéra de Monte-Carlo and the Oper Köln