Opera North: Street Scene
Newcastle Theatre Royal
Leeds-based Opera North presents two week-long seasons a year in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal, and a visit to Newcastle to see them is always worthwhile. On Friday I saw Kurt Well’s Street Scene at the Theatre Royal. This opera, written in 1947, is a bit of a rarity. It says a great deal for the company’s reputation that they had an almost full house for its second performance here this week.
Opera North is rightly proud of its full-time chorus, and this work gives them a special chance to shine. I counted 27 named characters in the cast, and many of the roles are allocated to chorus members. For example, Hazel Croft and Lorna James are the two Nursemaids who deliver with aplomb the comic “Lullaby” in Act Two.
In Berlin, Weill wrote opera for the people - The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Shortly after arriving in the States, he saw Porgy and Bess, and when he came to write this “dramatic musical” in 1947, Gershwin’s depiction of Catfish Row influenced his portrayal of the tenement community in Street Scene.
Opera North is lucky to have Kurt Weill specialist, James Holmes, to conduct. In their very good programme introduction he and director, Matthew Eberhard, explain that Weill aimed for a “new, seamless dramatic and musical totality.” Spoken dialogue moves into melodrama – a type of recitative – and then into song. To the audience the transition seems entirely natural, and our understanding of the characters grows through speech as well as song. With such a large cast, I found Act One rather unfocussed, and the main strands of the plot take a while to become clear. As in “Porgy”, the community celebrates a birth, gossips about an illicit love affair, only tentatively welcomes outsiders, and eventually is rocked by a murder, with the killer going on the run. Anna Maurrant (Giselle Allen, a wonderful Ellen Orford in recent productions of Peter Grimes) and her husband, Frank (Robert Hayward, another regular Opera North soloist) emerge as the tragic protagonists. But Anna’s affair with Steve Sankey, the milk collector, is talked about rather than seen. Hers is a fully formed operatic role, with a five-minute aria at the start of Act Two. His is a non-singing role, and he appears only briefly at the side of the stage in Act One. The other love interest between Anna’s daughter, Rose and the Jewish law-student, Sam Kaplan, is given more room to breathe, and chorus members, Gillene Butterfield and Alex Banfield act and sing well, despite clichéd lyrics. The biggest applause of the night goes to the energetic song and dance number between Mae Jones and Dick McGann (talented musical dance specialists, Michelle Andrews and Rodney Vubya).
Oddly for a work which is about community, there are no real choral numbers in the first half. Act Two works better. There’s a children’s chorus at the beginning (the children’s performances throughout are terrific), and eventually a wonderful big choral lament after the murder. Frank’s jealousy, which culminates in his killing of Steve and fatal wounding of his wife, is well-realised by Robert Hayward. His disappearance and re-capture make exciting theatre. The end of the opera is beautifully nuanced. The nursemaids reflect satirically on what the newspapers make of the killing. (Perhaps an influence on Kander and Ebb in Chicago?) Rose bids a touching farewell to her father. The Hildebrands are “dispossessed” (evicted), and as a new family arrives to view their flat, the occupants again meet to gossip.
So there’s lots of interest in Street Scene. I have nothing to criticise in its performance, but remain somewhat underwhelmed by the material. Its biggest flaw for me lies in its lack of a really great tune! Ironically the composer of one of the 20th century’s most iconic songs in Mack the Knife fails to hit the jackpot in this opera.
