About the work
Street Scene is an opera in two acts by Kurt Weill, who himself called it an "American opera". Elmer Rice wrote the book after his Pulitzer Prize-winning 1929 play, and Langston Hughes wrote the lyrics. After a tryout in Philadelphia in December 1946, the work premiered at the Adelphi Theatre in New York on 9 January 1947; it was first seen in Germany in Düsseldorf in 1955.
Plot
Over a sweltering summer evening and the following day, life unfolds in front of a New York tenement, where the neighbours complain about the heat and gossip about Anna Maurrant's affair with the milkman Sankey. Her daughter Rose grows close to the student Sam Kaplan, while her father Frank becomes increasingly suspicious. When he returns home unexpectedly, he shoots his wife and her lover; afterwards Rose decides to go away with her younger brother, without Sam.
Cultural significance
By combining European operatic form with Broadway song, jazz and blues, Weill realised his idea of an American opera; he and many critics regarded the score as his masterpiece. In 1947 Weill received the first Tony Award for Best Original Score. Today the work is performed mainly by opera companies and is seen as a link between The Threepenny Opera and West Side Story.