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PORT OPERA'S YOUNG ARTISTS PRESENT "TROUBLE IN TAHITI' by Leonard Bernstein

DEERTREES THEATRE was originally built in 1936 as a marvelous opera house constructed on the site of an old deer run in the forest above the village of Harrison, Maine. Constructed of rose hemlock in the Adirondack Style and is still considered one of the most acoustically perfect theatres outside New York.

DEERTREES is incredibly excited to have opera returning to the theatre - opera house - for their 79th Season this summer. Saturday, July18, promises to be a night we will all remember for a very long time!! Doors open at 7:00 PM.

PORTopera's Young Artists, our rising stars, tackle a truly American opera. TROUBLE IN TAHITI is the suburban drama of Sam and Dinah who, despite the gilded cheeriness of the 1950s, live lives of not-so-quiet desperation. Bernstein's wonderful score echoes the sonic vernacular of the 50s with a remix of softened bebop, cool jazz, Mitch Miller pop, TV tracks, radio commercials, and Broadway themes.

"To me, this opera is, in its simplest form, a statement about love in (suburban) America. It remains a scholarly criticism of the sanctity and (dare I say!) the purpose of marriage. You may also take away an exploration in feminism; an argument against capitalism; and an investigation of escapism. Mostly, though, what I think is magical about this opera is that it is a perfect, painful, beautiful slice of life."

- Richard Gammon, Director

TROUBLE IN TAHITI is a one-act opera in seven scenes composed by Leonard Bernstein with an English libretto by the composer, dedicated to Marc Blitzstein. It is the darkest among Bernstein's "musicals", and the only one for which he wrote the words as well as the music.

The opera received its first performance on 12 June 1952 at Bernstein's Festival of the Creative Arts on the campus of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts to an audience of nearly 3,000 people. The NBC Opera Theatre subsequently presented the opera on television in November 1952, a production which marked mezzo-soprano Beverly Wolff's professional debut in the role of Dinah. Wolff later reprised the role in the New York City Opera's first staging of the work in 1958. The original work is about 40 minutes long.

Musically, Bernstein utilizes many of the styles for which he is most recognized. The heroine's first aria has a wistful melancholy reminiscent of Aaron Copland's earlier vernacular works and of Bernstein's later writing in WEST SIDE STORY, while the jazzy interludes harken back to the score Bernstein wrote for ON THE TOWN.

Bernstein tried to make his opera as real as possible. He wanted everything about it to be believable. He even went to great lengths to write in language that would be heard in everyday speech during that time. "All the music [in TROUBLE IN TAHITI] derives from American vernacular roots, as do the words. And the words are very carefully set so that they will sound in the American cadence and with the American kind of syncopated, almost slurred quality".

While it was rumored that the troubled young couple was based on Leonard Bernstein himself and his new bride, Felicia Monteleagre -- he was working on the work during his honeymoon -- there is another theory that the story is based on the relationship of Bernstein's own mother and father.