LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918–1990)
Leonard Bernstein was on his honeymoon in 1951 when he began composing his intimate one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti. Situated chronologically between his triumphs on Broadway with On the Town (1944) and Candide and West Side Story (1956–57), the work delivers a candid, biting critique of post-war American suburban materialism, masking a profound spiritual emptiness beneath a glossy veneer of consumer happy-talk. Bernstein dedicated the opera to his mentor and friend Marc Blitzstein, whose work in American musical theater had long inspired him.
Framed by a vocal Jazz Trio that functions like a satirical, commercial-inspired Greek chorus praising the idyllic, white-picketfence comforts of 1950s suburbia, the story centers on the unraveling marriage of Sam and Dinah. Across seven vignettes—from an argument over breakfast to Sam’s aggressive corporate office victories and Dinah’s visit to her analyst recounting a dream of an untended garden—the couple grapples with an inability to communicate. The emotional centerpiece comes in Scene VI, where Dinah recounts a trashy, escapist South Sea movie romance, “Trouble in Tahiti” (“What a movie!”), gradually getting swept up in its lush, tropical fantasy before snapping back to reality. Unable to bridge their estrangement, Sam and Dinah opt to escape their evening silence by going out to see that very same movie, settling for the boughtand-paid-for magic of the silver screen.