Opera North’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s satirical opera Trouble in Tahiti will be available free online as part of the company’s lockdown Opera North at Home programme.
The 50-minute work will be streamed at 7pm on May 6 on Opera North’s YouTube channel (go here), where it will then continue to be available until June 1.
The film has also been produced in accessible formats for deaf and blind audience members, with British Sign Language interpretation, audio description and captioning.
The opera was filmed in Leeds in October 2017 as part of Opera North’s award-winning series of short operas, Little Greats.
Like his most popular works West Side Story and On The Town, Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti – set in 1950s US suburbia – combines the composer’s melodic invention with the distinctive sound of Hollywood and Broadway. In it the American Dream has turned suffocatingly sour, and while Sam and Dinah (Dutch baritone Quirijn de Lang and Canadian mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta, pictured top) appear to have the perfect life in their little white house, their growing detachment says otherwise. Sam escapes to work and the gym, while Dinah loses herself in movies – the biggest hit of the day being Trouble in Tahiti.
The online version is a taster for live performance later in the year: Matthew Eberhardt’s production is due to return to Opera North in October, in a double bill of Bernstein works alongside a new production with Phoenix Dance Theatre of the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story.
More info here