The telephone & Trouble in Tahiti

Particularly intriguing is the diptych, presented at the Teatro Goldoni, composed of The Telephone by Gian Carlo Menotti and – staged for the very first time now in Venice – Trouble in Tahiti by Leonard Bernstein: two single acts, which satirise certain recurring quirks in American society around the middle of the twentieth century. The hilarious The Telephone ridicules one of the small vices of the time: telephonic prolixity. The absolute protagonist is Lucy who communicates, over the phone, with Margaret – singing neoclassical arias à la Stravinsky – or with Pamela – singing to the rhythm of a polytonal waltz – or with Ben – accompanied by a ‘romantic’ clarinet. Lucy’s melodic élan is accompanied by an extensively lively orchestra in a largely tonal context. In Trouble in Tahiti, his ‘operatic debut’, a young Bernstein offers a gloomy and disturbing picture of society and, at the same time, of his family, with hints of almost self-punishing sarcasm. Through the marital crisis of a well-to-do bourgeois couple, Dinah and Sam – who represent the musician’s parents – Bernstein not only publicly shames the post-war, consumerist and elitist American society, but the American Dream itself. In this short but rather ‘dark’ musical – where a vocal jazz trio comments on the vicissitudes of the two protagonists – the great Lenny stands out with the refined eclecticism of his language – which sees the Tahiti rumba side-by-side with American swing – foreshadowing masterpieces, such as Candide and West Side Story.