WEILL
STREET SCENE GET A LOAD OF THAT!
RESOURCE PACK FOR TEACHERS
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About the workshop and curriculum links
Synopsis Facts about Kurt Weill The music of Kurt Weill Music to prepare before our workshop
The Creative Team
After the performance
Additional online resources
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Opera North’s Street Scene Workshop provides a unique opportunity for secondary music and drama students to work with professional singers, a conductor and director to explore a contemporary opera from the inside out. By joining the Chorus of Opera North for an hour, they will explore the music of Kurt Weill’s opera Street Scene, sing as an ensemble, develop an understanding of characterisation through dramatic singing, develop performance skills and stage awareness, and immerse themselves in what Weill called ‘a simple story of everyday life in a big city, a story of love and passion and greed and death’. Participating students will have prepared some vocal lines so they can join the chorus and explore the story of Street Scene and develop an understanding of how an opera works, what the role of the chorus is, how an ensemble works and contribute their own creative ideas to their telling of the story.
Key Learning outcomes linked to GCSE Music
Key Subject content outcomes from National Curriculum KS3
• Engage actively in the process of music activity • Develop performing skills individually and in groups to communicate musically with fluency and control of the resources used • Broaden musical experience and interests, develop imagination and foster creativity • Develop knowledge, understanding and skills needed to communicate effectively • Develop an awareness of a variety of instruments, styles and approaches to composing and performing • Engage with and appreciate the diverse heritage of music, in order to promote personal, social, intellectual and cultural development
• Play and perform confidently in a range of solo and ensemble contexts using their voice fluently and with accuracy and expression • Listen with increasing distinction to a wide range of music from great composers and musicians • Develop a deeper understanding of the music they perform and to which they listen, and its history
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In short: On a stiflingly hot summer’s day in New York, a family is pushed to breaking point. Frank is angry at a world that’s changing too fast, his daughter Rose longs for a better life away from the squalor of the city, and his unhappy wife Anna struggles with a terrible secret that could tear them all apart... As the heat builds, the tension erupts into violence and their lives are changed forever. Setting: A sidewalk in front of house no.346 in New York City during a heatwave in June
ACT 1
Evening The women of the house are sitting on the steps, complaining about the heat. Gradually characters are introduced and they comment on everything, even gossip about Mrs Maurrant’s love life in the song ‘ Get A Load of That!’ More characters enter: a group yearning for ice cream, Mr Maurrant who was happier in past times and we meet Sam Kaplan, an adolescent in love with Rose Maurrant. The act ends with a love duet in which Rose and Sam dream of lilac bushes and happiness together somewhere else.
ACT 2
Part 1: The following morning The scene opens with the morning music, the awakening of the house and children playing. Like voyeurs the audience sees the unhappy, complicated relationship between Mr and Mrs Maurrant, Mrs Maurrant and Rose, and we learn more about their individual personalities in the ensemble ‘I Was Up All Night’.Sam and Rose tell of their decision to take life into their own hands and an orchestral interlude links to the next scene.
Part 2: Afternoon, the same day The two nurse-maids are trying to sing the babies to sleep with a lullaby while gossiping about their parents. The finale begins as Rose sees her father for the last time: he has killed his wife and is being taken away by the police. We hear the song ’The Man from Down the Street‘. Rose realises that she has to say goodbye to Sam too. The opera ends with a reprise of the opening ensemble and life continues unchanged, despite the dramatic changes to the Maurrant family members. NB: The songs in bold are included in the workshop. These give you the context of where these songs occur in the story line.
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SIGNIFICANT LIFE EVENTS • Born into a German Jewish family in 1900 • Studied in Berlin with composer Engelbert Humperdinck (composer of the opera Hansel and Gretel ) • Married the actress Lotte Lenya who performed in some of his works including The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny • Targeted by the Nazis for his political sympathies, Weill’s music was banned from being performed in Germany until after WWII • Fled from the Nazis in 1933 along with other famous Jewish musicians such as Erich Korngold (film music) and Arnold Schoenberg (classical composer) settling in New York in 1935 • Died from cancer aged 50 in New York City
AS A COMPOSER • He was drawn to writing music for the voice, composing many songs, song cycles, operas and music theatre pieces • Weill believed in writing music that served a socially useful purpose. His theatrical works were often political, satirical, commenting upon life and social reform issues • A leading composer for the stage he was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Berthold Brecht, German poet and playwright. With Brecht, he developed sharp, social and satirical productions such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera, which included the ballad ‘Mack the Knife’ • His work is regularly performed in popular and classical contexts • He is recognised as transforming music theatre, creating the American Musical • Weill considered Street Scene to be his best, most significant work Kurt Weill: Berlin, ca. 1929 (photo: Thiele) Courtesy of the Weill-Lenya Research Center, Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, New York © 2019 The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music. All rights reserved.
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Weill referred to Street Scene, with lyrics by Langston Hughes, based on the 1929 play by Elmer Rice, as “American opera” and “Broadway opera.” He aimed to combine specific elements of European opera and American musical theatre. He draws upon a wide range of styles, from Puccini-like arias to Broadway-style numbers. There are also references to Gershwin, Wagner, blues and jazz, and an operatic parody in the ‘Ice Cream Sextet’. This variety of musical style makes his opera most accessible to a wide range of people. Likewise his themes of regret, jealousy, immigration and domestic violence in a New York tenement on a sweltering summer day, are still relevant, 70 years after it was first written.
The songs in Street Scene are self-contained and are linked by spoken dialogue. Some dialogue is accompanied, with leitmotifs, by the orchestra as in a melodrama. A leitmotif is a short musical idea which is used to represent something – a person, place, emotion, object - and is used by a composer to intentionally remind the listener of that person, place, emotion or object whenever it recurs in the larger work. Essentially a leitmotif is a musical storytelling tool.
The orchestral prelude introduces two recurring motifs: the swooping, yearning melody of Sam Kaplan’s ‘Lonely House’ (later heard in song no.10) and the bustling syncopations that depict New York and create a general feeling of unrest. The role of the chorus is to comment on the story and they are used in full to start and close the work. While the principals enact the double plot – the murder of Anna Maurrant by her husband Frank, and the unrequited love of Sam, for the Maurrants’ daughter Rose - the chorus become minor characters, gossiping about their neighbours, providing local colour with a number of songs in a range of musical styles.
The orchestra includes:
The opera includes a large number of roles with 26 singing roles and 19 speaking roles. This means that many of the cast are required to learn to play more than one role.
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1 flute (doubling piccolo) 1 oboe 2 clarinets (2nd doubling bass clarinet) bassoon 2 horns 2 trumpets 2 trombones piano/celesta harp timpani percussion strings
Musical style and idiom is used entirely to serve the drama. In Street Scene Weill frequently switches idioms, because: “...the play lent itself to a great variety of music, just as the streets of New York themselves embrace the music of many lands and many people. I had the opportunity to use different forms of musical expression, from popular songs to operatic ensembles, mood and dramatic music, music of young love, passion and death – and, overall, the music of a hot summer night in New York” - Kurt Weill
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We need the students to be able to sing the following, in order to maximise the learning and participation opportunities of the workshop. Number 1:
The second song can be found on page 8. It has been arranged in 2 vocal parts, so choose which students would be best for each part, or have all of them sing the first line (at which ever octave is comfortable) if you think that will make them more confident. We ask that students as much as possible can be “off book� (i.e. have the music pretty much memorised) in order to make the most of the learning and participation opportunities contained in the workshop.
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An opera is a dramatic work in one or more acts, set to music for singers and instrumentalists, sometimes with additional non-singing, acting and dance roles. It includes: Music A libretto (the text) Drama A setting and costumes Set and props Backdrops of large canvases Performers A technical designer Conductor
written by a composer written by the librettist with the interpretation led by a director which are devised by a designer which are created by the prop makers which are painted by scenic artists singers of different voice types, actors, dancers, and instrumentalists lighting, video content and special effects who brings it all together in performance from the orchestra pit
Some say that opera is the ultimate art form, because it combines all of the arts into one epic art form. Like music theatre it requires a coming together of all the arts and a creative team to bring it all together. Who is on an Opera Creative Team? Director Designer: Set and Costumes
Head of Music Lighting
Running an opera rehearsal room – who’s there in the room? Creative Team Music Department: Conductor, Assistant Conductor, Pianist, Language Coach Assistant Director Stage Management Props staff Cast: Soloists, Chorus, Actors, Animals, Dancers Designing an opera: how to bring an interpretation to life? Start with the libretto and score and think about: Where to set it? Whose story do you want to tell? When to set it? How do they look? How do they move? How do you want your audience to feel?
Video Choreographer
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Teacher additional follow up questions What additional music techniques has Kurt Weill used to create tension in the Chorus Scene and Lament?
Additional ostinatos, persistent restless quaver movement on the bass line, sudden changes of dynamics, use of dissonance and semitones as intervals and in chords. Why do you think the excerpt about the woman who lives upstairs finishes with a major chord? Is the composer commenting on the drama?
Open answer: There is no right or wrong to this. Possibly reflecting the peace of death, or making a comment that she is dead, but life goes on. General discussion questions post-workshop What did you enjoy about the experience? What was difficult about joining the Chorus of Opera North? What do you think the professional challenges are for a chorus member? What do you think is the point of a director?
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Street Scene by English National Opera Full Performance video from English National Opera: www.youtube.com/watch?v=HC5GDSJ6jTw
Information about the opera The Kurt Weill Foundation: www.kwf.org/pages/ww-street-scene.html Guide to Music Theatre: www.guidetomusicaltheatre.com/shows_s/street_scene.htm
Extension information https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/17178/Avci,Suna(DMVoice).pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
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Opera North’s education programme is supported by Opera North Future Fund and The Whitaker Charitable Trust Registered Charity Number 511726
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