ON A stiflingly hot summer’s day in New York, a family is pushed to breaking point.
Frank is angry at a world that’s changing too fast, his daughter Rose longs for a better life away from the squalor of the city, and his unhappy wife Anna struggles with a terrible secret that could tear them all apart… As the heat builds, the tension erupts into violence and their lives are changed forever.
Street Scene is set in sweltering 1940s New York. The plot centres around the various residents, of multiple nationalities, of a single tenement building and takes place over just 24 hours.
The two hour 45 minute production is being staged by Opera North at venues including Leeds Grand Theatre.
With numbers such as ‘Lonely House’ and ‘Moon-faced, Starry-eyed’, Street Scene was awarded Best Original Score at the very first Tony Awards in 1947.
The richly-varied score blends opera with the music of golden-age Broadway. Soaring arias and duets rub shoulders with jazz and the jitterbug, and Puccini shakes hands with Gershwin.
Street Scene was written by German-Jewish composer Kurt Weill who had great successes in Germany in the late 1920s before fleeing Nazi Germany to start a new life in North America
The production will be at Leeds Grand on January 18, January 25, February 12, February 20 and February 28.
*For more information, prices and tickets visit operanorth.co.uk
*Picture Tom Arber
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