Bernstein’s most personal musical - Trouble in Tahiti
Leonard Bernstein needs no introduction as a composer. Everyone knows West Side Story and Candide. Trouble in Tahiti is less well known. It is a one-act opera/musical/piece of musical theatre, in seven scenes for which he wrote both the music and the English libretto.
Bernstein began the work in spring 1951 after temporarily stepping back from conducting to focus on composition, writing both the libretto and the music.
The premiere took place on June 12, 1952, at Brandeis (Waltham, Massachusetts), conducted by Bernstein himself before nearly 3,000 people. It followed an overlong all-day symposium, so the curtain rose around 11 p.m. on a hastily built outdoor stage with poor amplification. Bernstein later called the performance “half-baked.”
The rather bleak story has nothing to do with Tahiti! It centres on one day in the life of a suburban American couple, Sam and Dinah, whose outwardly comfortable life masks emotional emptiness, poor communication, and marital discord. Bernstein based the characters and relationship closely on his own parents, Sam and Jennie Bernstein. The neglected child “Junior” in the opera echoes Bernstein’s own childhood resentments.
Bernstein wanted to write an explicitly American opera that used vernacular language and music, drawn from popular song, jazz, musical theatre, and the style of radio commercials, rather than traditional European operatic conventions.
A jazz vocal trio functions as a modern sort of “Greek chorus born of the radio commercial,” ironically celebrating the couple’s idealised suburban life. The score mixes these lighter, popular idioms with more intense, expressive passages that underscore the couple’s isolation and longing.
The wistful ‘I was standing in a garden’ is probably the best known song from it.
[media=https://youtu.be/qMv13VilDEA?is=i1rERDe-40IlJRU2]
You can see the whole thing here:
[media=https://youtu.be/L1HoB7XbEOY?is=YyvlOwhNzNC5gWIJ]
Bernstein began the work in spring 1951 after temporarily stepping back from conducting to focus on composition, writing both the libretto and the music.
The premiere took place on June 12, 1952, at Brandeis (Waltham, Massachusetts), conducted by Bernstein himself before nearly 3,000 people. It followed an overlong all-day symposium, so the curtain rose around 11 p.m. on a hastily built outdoor stage with poor amplification. Bernstein later called the performance “half-baked.”
The rather bleak story has nothing to do with Tahiti! It centres on one day in the life of a suburban American couple, Sam and Dinah, whose outwardly comfortable life masks emotional emptiness, poor communication, and marital discord. Bernstein based the characters and relationship closely on his own parents, Sam and Jennie Bernstein. The neglected child “Junior” in the opera echoes Bernstein’s own childhood resentments.
Bernstein wanted to write an explicitly American opera that used vernacular language and music, drawn from popular song, jazz, musical theatre, and the style of radio commercials, rather than traditional European operatic conventions.
A jazz vocal trio functions as a modern sort of “Greek chorus born of the radio commercial,” ironically celebrating the couple’s idealised suburban life. The score mixes these lighter, popular idioms with more intense, expressive passages that underscore the couple’s isolation and longing.
The wistful ‘I was standing in a garden’ is probably the best known song from it.
[media=https://youtu.be/qMv13VilDEA?is=i1rERDe-40IlJRU2]
You can see the whole thing here:
[media=https://youtu.be/L1HoB7XbEOY?is=YyvlOwhNzNC5gWIJ]
56-60, M