Easy to forget that the American dream – the phrase dates from 1931 – was originally a quest for liberty and equality, not cars, washing machines and refrigerators. By the time Leonard Bernstein wrote his one-act opera Trouble in Tahiti (1952), mod cons had pushed lofty ideals out of the way. The sweet suburban life of Sam and Dinah, the married couple in the opera, “looks” like domestic bliss but feels awful, as Bernstein’s own libretto puts it. Opening the Linbury theatre’s new season, in a stylish and probing staging by Oliver Mears, conducted by Nicholas Chalmers, Trouble in Tahiti is paired with its more cumbersome sequel, A Quiet Place (1983). Both are in orchestrations, reduced and adapted, by Garth Edwin Sunderland, sparklingly played by unnamed soloists from the Royal Opera orchestra.
With a nod to Kurt Weill, and paving the way for his own Candide and West Side Story, soon to follow, Trouble in Tahiti had already established Bernstein’s distinctive flair. He embraced jazz harmonies, shoo-be-doo scat singing for the commentating trio (oddly amplified here but well sung) and colloquial dialogue. Sam and Dinah have everything, including affluence, psychiatrist, milliner, superior attitudes and an obedient child, Junior, who sees all but says nothing. Only happiness is absent. In one version of the text (Bernstein wrestled with the work), Dinah asks: “You call this a life? Day after day of the same humiliation. Day after day with no consideration of what it means to be a woman.”
