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Weill: Street Scene / Mauceri, Barstow, Ramey, Reaux, Hadley


Release Date: 06/12/2008 
Label:  Decca   Catalog #: 433371   Spars Code: DDD 
Composer:  Kurt Weill
Performer:  Jerry Hadley,  Raphael Vigars,  Blythe Duff,  Ben Holt,   ... 
Conductor:  John Mauceri
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Scottish Opera Chorus,  Scottish Opera Orchestra
Number of Discs: 2 
Recorded in: Stereo 
Length: 2 Hours 28 Mins. 

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Notes and Editorial Reviews

"Street Scene is the most ambitious product of Weill's American years, and the work he reckoned the fulfilment of his dreams for a fusion of music and drama. It is something of a Porgy and Bess transferred from Catfish Row to the slum tenements of New York—a kind of 1940s 'soap' complete with crime passionel. Where Porgy and Bess, though, is through-composed with recitatives, Street Scene fuses music and drama in a way that recalls Show Boat—a mixture of set musical numbers, straight dialogue, and dialogue over musical underscoring. The musical numbers themselves range from genuine operatic arias and ensembles to rousing 1940s dance numbers.

The only previous substantial version was the original 1947 cast recording, Read more subsequently transferred to CD (CBS (CD) CD44668, 5/89). That contained most of the major numbers but had some notable omissions. On those grounds alone this recording is highly welcome, for it brings us for the first time such numbers as the Ice Cream sextet and the swinging dance number ''Moon-faced, starry-eyed''. Unlike EMI's Gramophone Award-winning Show Boat, which offered most of the underscored dialogue and just some straight dialogue, this gives us everything. In demonstrating how Weill fused dialogue and music, it proves fascinating, rewarding, highly impressive listening.

This is, in fact, the first of two complete recordings resulting from the joint Scottish Opera/ENO production of 1989. For it Decca have reinforced the cast of the stage performances with major 'names'. Jerry Hadley makes a fine romantic lead, creating the necessary frisson in ''Lonely house'' (recorded by Lotte Lenya and others) and, with Angelina Reaux, the glorious lyrical outpouring of ''We'll go away together''. Samuel Ramey is suitably forbidding as the tragic Sam Maurrant in ''Let things be like they always was''. Even the smaller roles, in which the work abounds, are strongly cast, with Barbara Bonney in the delicious graduation celebration ''Wrapped in a ribbon'', and Arleen Auger and Della Jones as a couple of bloodthirsty nursemaids. As conductor, John Mauceri proves in typically commanding control of the score's range of idioms."

-- Andrew Lamb, Gramophone [8/1991]
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Works on This Recording

1. Street Scene by Kurt Weill
Performer:  Jerry Hadley (Tenor), Raphael Vigars (), Blythe Duff (),
Ben Holt (Baritone), Jane Betsworth (), Samuel Ramey (Bass),
Arleen Augér (Soprano), Emile Belcourt (Tenor), Barbara Bonney (Soprano),
Meriel Dickinson (Mezzo Soprano), Della Jones (Mezzo Soprano), Fiona Kimm (Alto),
Elaine Mackillop (), David Marsh (), Bruce Hubbard (Baritone),
Ryan McBride (Voice), David Kuebler (Tenor), David Morrison (),
Tom McVeigh (), Anne McLellan Scott (), Gillian Taylor (),
James Differ (), Stephanie Minelly (), Anthony Mee (),
Hazel Hiram (), Kurt Ollmann (Baritone), Mary Munger (),
Philip Gould (), Matthew Costello (), Malcolm Aitken (),
John Mauceri (), Ian McKinven (), Roberto Cecere (),
Alastair Atkinson (), Angelina Réaux (Soprano), Josephine Barstow (Soprano)
Conductor:  John Mauceri
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Scottish Opera Chorus,  Scottish Opera Orchestra
Period: 20th Century 
Written: 1947; USA 
 Venue:  Govan Town Hall, Glasgow, Scotland 
Length: 148 Minutes 26 Secs. 
Language: English 
Notes: Selection recorded: August, 1989 and March, 1990. 

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