The Slipped Disc Daily comfort zone (33): The ballad of urban isolation

The Slipped Disc Daily comfort zone (33): The ballad of urban isolation

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norman lebrecht

April 18, 2020

From Kurt Weill’s Street Scene, the best metropolitan monologue before Stephen Sondheim:

 

Comments

  • Bruce says:
    April 19, 2020 at 3:09 am

    I’m sure I won’t be the first to think of this, but surely Leonard Bernstein’s “Lonely Town” gives this song some competition for “the best metropolitan monologue before Stephen Sondheim.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4x2A281o20

    [Saturday 4/18/20, 7pm]

    Reply
  • Joe says:
    April 19, 2020 at 11:51 am

    The recent Opera North production of Street Scene was the last show I saw before the theatres all shut down in the UK. By that point, given how things were developing on the continent, I had already realised it would be the last performance of any kind I’d be seeing for some time, so watching it had a particular resonance. I thought it was a really well-staged production and I enjoyed the piece (first time seeing it), even if its musically eclectic nature gets the better of it sometimes. On a personal level and thinking about various times in my life, this number really resonated with me.

    If there’s a number in it that really made me forget about the woes of the world (and possibly the least operatic number in the show), it would have to be “Moon-faced, Starry-eyed”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r4F7oJsUBE

    Reply

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