Sandy Burnett introduces a double bill of American opera from the forties and fifties, recorded in the Radio
Theatre in Broadcasting House with the BBC Concert Orchestra, conductor Martyn Brabbins.
Trouble in Tahiti, Bernstein's first foray into opera, deals with love gone cold in a stale marriage. Rarely heard today, it is full of barbed wit and the composer's most boisterous music, despite the serious subject matter. The evening opens with Gian Carlo Menotti 's light-hearted menage a trois.
Menotti The Telephone
Bernstein On the Town:
Three Dance Episodes
8.05 The Road to Tahiti
Humphrey Burton , Bernstein's biographer, investigates the pathway that took the composer from musical to opera via Tahiti.
8.25 Bernstein Trouble in Tahiti
GARTH BARDSLEY (tenor).LINDSAY BENSON (bar)
SOUNDING THE CENTURY