Golden Era: American Musical Theater during Kurt Weill's years in America

Rodgers and Hammerstein

By Press photo - ebay, Public Domain

By the time Street Scene premiered in 1947, Kurt Weill had been in the United States since 1935. The period from his arrival until his premature death in 1950 marked a particularly memorable era in the history of American music theater. A dazzling group of geniuses were at the height of their creative powers, leaving an array of immortal works. Here's a list:

George and Ira Gershwin: Porgy and Bess (1935)

Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart: On Your Toes (1936); The Boys From Syracuse (1938); Pal Joey (1940)

Marc Blitzstein: The Cradle Will Rock (1937)

Harold Arlen: The Wizard of Oz (1939); St. Louis Woman (1946)

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II: Oklahoma (1941); Carousel (1943); Allegro (1947); South Pacific (1949)

Irving Berlin Annie Get Your Gun (1946)

Leonard Bernstein On the Town (1944)

Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe: Brigadoon (1947)

Cole Porter: Kiss Me, Kate (1948)

Weill immersed himself in all of this, observing, processing and internalizing the point of view, the energy and the musical genres of American musicals. He clearly realized that the cynical and satirical political messages of his previous collaborator Bertold Brecht were foreign to the American zeitgeist. It wasn't that American theater shied away from powerful social messages; far from it. Rodgers and Hammerstein, in particular, brought new dramatic weight to the form of the musical with

• the violent death of a principal character in Oklahoma (not to mention the innovation of a ballet);
• domestic abuse in Carousel; and
• racism in South Pacific

The main difference between these examples and Brecht's so-called "epic theater" was the complete lack of irony west of the Atlantic. Brecht famously and purposely removed the audience's ability to be engaged by the story or empathize with the characters. Deliberate artificiality forced the patrons to focus on the politics of the play in question.

In The Threepenny Opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Seven Deadly Sins, Weill chose a musical language fully as ironic as Brecht's libretti. The music was tuneful, quirky and heavy with irony.

On record as acknowledging Richard Rodgers to be his chief rival and competition on the Broadway Scene, Weill adapted his musical approach, willingly crafting music that, while as tuneful as ever, would appeal to the American public. This new version of Kurt Weill composed music with honest sentiment, charm, and a more traditional dramatic technique. Thanks to the notoriety he had gained in Europe, many of the bright lights of the New York theater scene were happy to work with him, including Ira Gershwin, Alan Jay Lerner, Moss Hart...

...and, of course, Elmer Rice and Langston Hughes, his Street Scene co-creators.

My next post will examine the Street Scene musical score in some detail. I'll float a couple of theories about the choices Weill made in selecting the widely diverse musical styles and genres of the opera. There had never before been a score like this one, and there'll never be another like it again.

And that's just how he wanted it.