Weill:Street Scene [Cast Recording]

Creighton Thompson (Performer), David Evan Thomas (Performer), David Thomas (Performer), Don Saxon (Performer), Lauren Gilbert (Performer), Kurt Weill (Composer), Maurice de Abravanel (Conductor), Beverly Janis (Performer), Elen Lane (Performer), Ellen Carleen (Performer), Hope Emerson (Performer), Marion Covey (Performer), Anne Jeffreys (Performer), Helen Arden (Performer), Peggy Trunley (Performer), Polyna Stoska (Performer), Zosia Gruchala (Performer), Brian Sullivan (Performer), Irving Kaufman (Performer), Sydney Rainer (Performer) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Performer: Creighton Thompson, David Evan Thomas, David Thomas, Don Saxon, Lauren Gilbert, et al.
• Conductor: Maurice de Abravanel
• Composer: Kurt Weill
• Audio CD (October 25, 1990)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Cast Recording
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B0000026OM
• In-Print Editions: MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #80,419 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)
  • #67 in Music > Broadway & Vocalists > Musicals > Classic Musicals
  • #89 in Music > Classical > Opera & Vocal > Languages > English

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Less than the sum of it's parts, August 24, 2009

By 

John Ellis "jonthes" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weill:Street Scene (Audio CD)

There are wonderful songs and elements in "Street Scene", and Weill won the first composer Tony ever awarded for it, but it doesn't hold together even in the recordings of the score (this or the complete). There is something condescending in its tone, 'the little people sing too' which is unintentional but done better by Blitzstein and Bernstein before and after (though in other works they obviously bow to Weill). There is nothing New York in the sound, which is odd as Weill is most chameleon of composers; the date, the period is there but the songs are either pop/Broadway or Italian operetta and don't seem to belong to this particular block. With a great cast of actor/singers it might fly, but I haven't heard them yet.

I actually prefer the recently issued Naxos Hollywood Bowl concert version with most of this cast, nearly an hour, in spite of some sound problems. The play holds up (Rice was as good as he thought he was), the music stands on its own and the best of Hughes lyrics are wonderful (the rest pedestrian), but they were not on the same page for most of it, literally.

Oddly neither this nor the Naxos recorded "Moon Faced", which was a hit for Crosby and others. When it's reissued, that would be a good bonus track.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Street Scene: An American Musical/Opera, August 15, 2006

By 

S. Mason - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weill:Street Scene (Audio CD)

I list this in both my Musicals and Opera.. I read a review , not of this production,, but of an operatic one , comparing it to "louise".. I'm amazed at how fast Weill adapted to the american idiom..I thinks his best work was with Brecht and Ira Gershwin.. that being said.. this is a good recording encouraging me to see,, if I can find one, a production..
Anne Jefferies,, I believe was in a revival of kismet and is georgeous..

5 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New concept of collaboration, May 18, 2000

By 

Yair Haklai - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Weill:Street Scene (Audio CD)

Larry Warren in his book :"Anna Sokolow The Rebellious Spirit" writes: "In "Oklahoma!" and "On the town",Agnes de Mille and Jerome Robbins had pioneered in the use of dance to further the plot of a musical, but their language was based on a ballet vocabulary. In Street Scene Anna proved that Social-dance forms have an inherent dramatic powers when they are artfully used as an expression of the society that created them. Ten years later Robbins used his genius to bring this concept to its fullest expression on Broadway in West Side Story".