Kurt Weill’s seldom seen Street Scene has it all—music, dance, drama

By Peter Alexander July 23 at 3:20 p.m.

Anyone who loves Broadway theater, drama, bluesy musical numbers and zippy dance routines needs to go into the mountains.

Central City Opera’s production of Street Scene by the German-American composer Kurt Weill has all that and more. A thoroughly strong cast brings the drama to life, and the direction and choreography by Daniel Pelzig hits all the right notes. A realistic setting with no revisionist points to make captures the essence of the 1946 original, a gritty portrait of life in a Manhattan tenement building, with gossipy neighbors, a bullying husband and cheating wife, idealistic young lovers yearning to escape, and a potpourri of ethnicities.

Weill had one of the most remarkable and diverse careers of any 20th-century composer. Following his sensational success in Berlin working with playwright Bertolt Brecht on the jazzy Dreigroschenoper (Threepenny opera) and other works he fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and came to New York in 1935. From that point on, he wrote musicals for Broadway and aimed to create an American opera that combined popular styles with grand opera.

Street Scene, which opened on Broadway in 1946, may be the closest he came to that goal, and it is certainly one of this finest works. It has an ideal American pedigree, with lyrics by Langston Hughes and a story based on the Pulitzer-prize winning play of the same title by Elmer Rice, who also wrote the book for the opera.

The music is appealing, combining Broadway set pieces like the ensemble for graduating students “Wrapped in a  Ribbon and Tied in a Bow” and the dance number “Moon-faced, Starry-eyed,” with blues-tinged arias, like “Lonely House” sung by the young hero Sam Kaplan, and Puccini-esque arias like “Somehow I could Never Believe” sung by Anna Maurrant.

As great as it is, Street Scene is not often performed—another reason to travel to Central City this summer. Among reasons for its rarity are the challenges it presents, including a cast with more than 30 named roles, each with their own story to tell. Without care, a performance can become loosely episodic. A similar danger is that the most appealing Broadway-style numbers are extraneous to the plot, and can easily seem tacked on.

Fortunately, Pelzig’s direction met these difficulties head on. He created a fast-moving show, where the diversity of the tenement community is part of the story, and the numbers were pulled into the musical flow. David Harwell’s set was traditional, with realistic tenement steps and apartment windows on two floors looking out to the street, but it suits the show perfectly. Once again, the gritty realism is part of the plot.

With so many singers, it is not possible to recognize all of the many cast members who made a strong contribution to the show. Of the leading roles, Katherine Pracht in the role of Anna Maurant, the wayward but kindly wife of the building bully, gave a good portrayal of a fragile woman with romantic dreams while living on the brink of disaster. She sang with great expression, but with a strong vibrato that occasionally threatened to obscure the text.

As her abusive husband, Frank Maurant, Kevin Burdette used a rough edge to his voice to convey the character’s menace. A veteran of bad guy roles, including Claggert in Billy Budd in Central City and Sweeney Todd in Dallas, he softened his portrayal in the final scenes, creating a whole character. If his sudden tenderness seems less than convincing, that is the script and not the performance, which was heartfelt.

Christie Conover was endearing as Rose, the Maurants’ daughter who is pursed by a number of undesirable suitors as well as by Sam, the shy young male romantic lead who cannot quite express his love. She sang with a poised and polished sound that stood out from the more rough-hewn characters. As Sam, Christian Sanders had to reach for some of the high notes, but sang an appealing and well shaped aria in “Lonely House.” Their gradually blooming romantic duet, “Remember that I Care,” offered the opera’s tenderest moments.

I enjoyed the gossiping neighbor ensembles, which become a latter-day Greek chorus commenting on the action. The cast embraced the ethnic types written into the score, rarely overdoing it. Apprentice singer James Mancuso produced a definitively Italian sound as Lippo Fiorentino, the most strongly stereotyped of the neighbors. 

Bernard Holcomb brought a big, robust voice and a friendly demeanor to the role of Henry Davis, the building janitor. As the overheated lovers in the big dance number, “Moon-faced, Starry-eyed,” Lauren Gemelli and Jeffrey Scott Parsons nearly stole the show with their saucy dialog and athletic dancing.

Members of the Colorado Children’s Chorale sang strongly and conveyed a rowdy sense of fun in their teasing game at the beginning of the second act. Brian Erickson acted strongly in the role of Willie Maurant, Rose’s rowdy little brother.

Conductor Adam Turner led the Central City orchestra in a stylish performance, getting the Broadway idioms right and supporting the singers well. A few times they covered the spoken dialog, but the big musical numbers were all outstanding. In short: this production of Street Scene is a rare opportunity to see an important work of American musical theater done well.