By Kelly Dean Hansen, freelance classical music writer
The number of named characters in the cast of Street Scene, German composer Kurt Weill’s American “Broadway opera,” is almost overwhelming, yet the set, reflecting the title, never changes. The façade of an East Side Manhattan tenement is the constant backdrop for a powerful and shattering drama that unfolds over the course of two unbearably hot days.
Weill, who emigrated to the U.S. in 1935, wanted Street Scene to be a uniquely American fusion of the Broadway musical—typified by Rodgers and Hammerstein—with European operatic idioms. It opened on Broadway in 1947 and won the inaugural Tony Award for Best Original Score but has mainly been performed by opera companies since then. Weill adapted Elmer Rice’s Pulitzer-winning play from 1929 (with Rice’s cooperation), using lyrics by the great American poet Langston Hughes.
The opera completes the trio of productions in Central City Opera’s 2024 season, all works that had their official premieres in New York City, though their composers were English, Italian, and German. It opened July 17, delayed from July 13 by cast illnesses. For a company with a vast array of talent, including the apprentice and studio artists of its Bonfils-Stanton Foundation Artists Training Program, Street Scene is a felicitous choice. Director Daniel Pelzig maneuvers the characters deftly around the remarkably realistic and functional set, while conductor Adam Turner’s orchestra heroically negotiates the complex score that also meshes numerous styles.
The central figure in the drama is Mrs. Anna Maurrant, whose alleged extramarital affair with a milkman drives the narrative. Dramatic soprano Katherine Pracht, making her CCO debut, exudes radiant tragedy throughout her sympathetic portrayal, and her expository aria “Somehow I Never Could Believe” is sung with heartrending pathos. As her jealous, abusive, and ultimately murderous husband Frank, bass Kevin Burdette paints a terrifying portrait of unenlightened masculinity. Near the end, when Burdette sings a passionate aria about how much Maurrant loved the wife he murdered, the audience may not believe it, but will believe that he believes it.
Soprano Christie Conover, long a local favorite and an incredibly gifted singer and actress, plays their daughter Rose. Though her entrance is late, Rose becomes the moral focus of the drama. Even at the end, when she separates from her love interest Sam Kaplan after her mother’s murder, Rose articulates the very modern idea that people do not and cannot “belong” to each other. Tenor Christian Sanders plays the tender and idealistic, but flawed, Sam. He is given perhaps the opera’s most famous number, “Lonely House,” in which his high notes are breathtaking. Sanders and Conover have three duets, all of which are magnificent.
There are three other prominent couples in the tenement. Mezzo-soprano Hilary Ginther is a forceful presence as Emma Jones, who leads the gossip. Cherry Duke, also a mezzo, frequently joins Ginther as the Swedish immigrant Olga Olsen. Baritones Jake Surzyn and Andrew Harris complement them well as husbands George Jones (who spends too much time at the bar) and Carl Olsen. Former apprentice artist Véronique Filloux takes the sparkling soprano role of German immigrant Greta Fiorentino. Tenor James Anthony Mancuso steps into the role of her Italian husband Lippo, joyously leading one of the opera’s most lighthearted numbers, a paean to ice cream.
Three more supporting tenor roles are notable. Bernard Holcomb as the janitor Henry Davis has one of the more memorable songs, “I Got a Marble and a Star.” Rob Onuska as Sam’s politically outspoken father Abraham Kaplan has several outstanding moments. Apprentice artist Christian Holden as expectant father Daniel Buchanan leads a mildly humorous dissertation on childbirth from a male perspective, “When a Woman Has a Baby.”
As Rose’s boss and attempted suitor Harry Easter, baritone Isaiah Feken gets the pure Broadway number urging Rose to try her luck on the stage. Song and dance specialists Lauren Gemilli and Jeffrey Scott Parsons (who made an indelible impression in last season’s Kiss Me, Kate) as the Jones daughter Mae and her boyfriend Dick McGann provide much needed levity with the well-known set piece “Moon-faced, Starry-eyed.”
One plot point shows a family about to be evicted right after the older daughter’s graduation. As that daughter, studio artist Katelyn Cox is highlighted in the elaborate ensemble number “Wrapped in a Ribbon and Tied in a Bow.”
An ironic “Lullaby” is deliciously sung by apprentice artists Ariel Andrew and Melanie Dubil as two passing nursemaids pushing babies in prams. The song follows Anna Maurrant’s murder and illustrates the spread of the scandal.
The colorful ensemble is enlivened by a wonderful children’s chorus provided by the Colorado Children’s Chorale and driven by Brian Erickson as the Maurrant son Willie. The children’s number at the beginning of Act II is initially playful but makes a darker turn as the action leans into the intense drama that will follow.
The opening chorus “Ain’t it Awful, the Heat?” frames the entire opera and sets its tone. Its return at the end shows the remaining characters in the building going back to their regular lives as if the intervening drama had never occurred. If a melody sticks in the mind after the conclusion, it will be that one.
The entire cast, from the large roles to the smaller mostly speaking parts, is never short of superb, and that is also true of the direction, choreography, orchestral playing, and overall vision. The quality of Weill’s “Broadway opera” in this production is on par with the best things that have ever been seen on the Central City stage.