Northwest Ohio audiences will get to see a rare area production of Kurt Weill’s operatic masterpiece
“Street Scene” today and Sunday at Bowling Green State University.
BGSU’s Opera Theater will produce the piece with the help of a $10,000 grant from the Kurt Weill
Foundation.
A collaboration between composer Weill and lyricist Langston Hughes, the 20th-century American opera
premiered in 1946 and was based on the 1929 Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Elmer Rice. Incorporating
elements of jazz, blues and popular song with more traditional operatic styles, blended with Hughes’
Harlem Renaissance sensibility, it won Weill a Tony Award for Best Original Score.
It is set entirely on the front steps of a New York City brownstone and the adjacent street, and involves
the complex lives of the residents of the building and neighborhood, capturing the sense of despair
pervading that era.
Performances are at 8 tonight and at 3 p.m. Sunday in the Thomas B. and Kathleen M. Donnell Theatre at
the Wolfe Center for the Arts. Advance tickets are $15; all tickets are $20 the day of the performance.
Call 419-372-8171, go online at bgsu.edu/arts, or visit the box office in the Wolfe Center to purchase
tickets.