Trouble in Tahiti (Leonard Bernstein) – Premiere

Anyone watching the 2023 film “Maestro” about Leonard Bernstein might get the impression that neither the composer’s life nor his marriage were easy. Born in 1918, he married the actress Felicia Montealegre in 1951. A year later, he composed his one-act opera “Trouble in Tahiti”. And here Bernstein takes a tongue-in-cheek look at the “institution” of marriage in his own musical language, which touches on operetta, musicals and opera. He also sends a jazz trio into the fray, singing in swinging rhythms about an idyll in which the morning sun casts its first light on the American happiness of wife Dinah and husband Sam. Bernstein’s opera couple have a son together and live in a well-kept suburban neighborhood somewhere in America. Everything is actually in perfect order. But in the kitchen at home, instead of harmony, there are arguments right from breakfast, with accusations hailing down over toast at the latest. The only thing Dinah and Sam still have in common is a longing for their past love. But even this remains unspoken, and so the two escape into parallel worlds. While Sam indulges in his passion for handball, Dinah dreams herself into the ideal island world of a movie, tellingly titled “Trouble in Tahiti”. Bernstein wants to use it to bring the two of them back together at the end:They should simply go to the movies together.If that’s not a (new) beginning!
From January 31, 2025 on the stage of the Lucerne Theater.