Venue: Gran Teatro del Liceu
Company: The Opera Group
Director: John Fulljames
Conductor: Tim Murray
First Performance: 1 March 2013 (4 performances)
Event page
First produced in England in 2008, the Opera Group staging of Street Scene has remained a big hit. The production attracted much favorable attention to Weill’s opera, which won the Evening Standard Ned Sherrin Award for Best Musical that year. The Opera Group toured England with Street Scene in 2011. This year, after a successful engagement at the Théâtre du Chatelet in Paris (25-31 January), the tour will continue in Barcelona. As in Paris, the Barcelona performance will feature several members of the 2008 cast. The Barcelona run will end 5 March 2013.
Features
Learn more about Street Scene
Reviews (from 2011 Tour)
“If you want to see a theatre at full stretch and maximum throttle, head to the Young Vic, which is reviving its thrilling production of Kurt Weill’s 1947 ‘Broadway opera,’ Street Scene. The show, staged in collaboration with The Opera Group, won the Evening Standard award for best musical three years ago, even though it played for only a handful of performances. Now it is back for a longer run and a national tour . . . an extraordinary work, mixing operatic arias with jazz, blues and spirituals. The music has the vibrant pulse of New York about it, and at times Puccini seems to be shaking hands with George Gershwin.”
–Charles Spencer, The Telegraph
“Fulljames galvanises his cast of 80–including a large community contingent–in constantly hectic movement. They look right, and Southbank Sinfonia Touring provides the right swing for the soundtrack, as Weill’s bright string of song-and-dance numbers gets into gear. If some of those numbers stray into ‘Top Hat’ territory, that’s just fine, because several of Fulljames’s singer-actors really can do Astaire-and-Rogers: Kate Nelson, John Moabi, and James McOran-Campbell–take a bow. Meanwhile Joseph Shovelton and Paul Featherstone light up the stage with their sheer charisma, while Susanna Hurrell and Paul Curievici wring the heart. Elena Ferrari’s performance as the doomed Anna Maurrant is heroic, as is that of Geof Dolton as her explosive but impotent husband.”
–Michael Church, The Independent
“Elena Ferrari is heart-rendingly moving as Anna, who is clearly an unnatural slattern on the mere nursery slopes of adultery. ‘The days turn to months, the months turn to years, the greasy soap suds drown our wishes,’ she sings in Langston Hughes’ libretto. No amount of brave smiling will convince us when she adds: ‘I always believe there’ll be a brighter day.’ Meanwhile Susanna Hurrell and Paul Curievici are in gobsmacking vocal form as Anna’s daughter Rose and her Jewish suitor Sam. . . . When added to the emotional impact of the family tragedy followed by the life-goes-on cruelty of new tenants moving in plus the gawping callousness of a pair of comic nannies it all packs a memorable punch.”
–Simon Edge, Express
