A Summer Celebration of Lenny Bernstein

by Bruce Chadwick

Bruce Chadwick lectures on history and film at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He also teaches writing at New Jersey City University. He holds his PhD from Rutgers and was a former editor for the New York Daily News. Mr. Chadwick can be reached at bchadwick@njcu.edu.

The Koussevitzky shed is a large, 5,700 seat, low-slung theater that sits gently amid the lawns and forests of the Tanglewood Music Center in Lenox, Massachusetts, in the heart of the Berkshires. It was jammed to capacity, with hundreds more music and theater lovers nestled into chairs on the lawn that surrounds it July 7 for the start of a summer long tribute to the works of Leonard Bernstein, Tanglewood’s long-time conductor and its favorite son, who would have been 100 years old this August (he died in 1990).

The Bernstein Tribute was designed to showcase different kinds of Bernstein shows. You have On the Town(plays), Trouble in Tahiti(opera), West Side Story(movies) and a variety of his musical works (classical music).

That first show was an elaborate concert version of Bernstein’s hit 1944 movie, On the Town, that starred Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra, featuring the Boston Pops Orchestra, led by Keith Lockhart

On the Town was the first of Leonard Bernstein’s movie musicals and a great choice to open the tribute to the composer at Tanglewood. The movie, to which he wrote the music when he was just 26, has become a huge television favorite, too. It was on national TV again just last week. The musical at Tanglewood was followed by Bernstein’s one-act opera, Trouble in Tahiti, last week.

When you attend a “concert version” or “semi-staged” performance, as On the Town was billed, you expect a small group of performers playing many roles with a symphony. On the Town was quite different. The show featured a pretty full company of actors and singers who produced a sensational production whose music, from one of the nation’s great orchestras, tore the roof off the Koussevitzy Shed on a crisp summer evening. The play had music by Bernstein book and lyrics by Betty Comden and Adolph Green, based on an idea by Jerome Robbins. It was directed by Kathleen Marshall. The performers included Brandon Victor Dixon, Anne Horak, Kevin Munhall, Jeffrey Schecter, Eric Sciotto, Megan Sikora, Dennis Stowe, Erica Sweany and Lara Seibert Young.

On the Town is the story of three sailors on a 24 hour leave in New York City during World War II and their search for a lot of fun and a lot of girls. They find both amid an uproarious adventure up and down Broadway that ends at Coney Island. It starts with the memorable song “New York, New York (It’s a Hell of a Town).”

Director Marshall did a fine job of staging the show, without sets, and giving the play that same fantastic you-are-there feeling as the film. The show is spread out all over the very large stage.

The second show in the Bernstein tribute was the opera Trouble in Tahiti. The one-hour production was paired with an hour or so of Bernstein songs, ones that did not get as much attention as his West Side Story classics. Among them were two songs that had been cut from Broadway show, “Ain’t Got No Tears Left” from On the Town, and “A Quiet Girl” from Wonderful Town. There was also a number from Bernstein’s 1950s Broadway show Peter Pan, “Peter, Peter,” and “Take Care of this House,” from the Broadway musical 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. The singers in this half of the performance were Alexandra Silber, Nathan Gunn, Elie Fishman, William Ferguson and Christopher Dylan Herbert. Jamie Bernstein served as narrator and Craig Ketter was the pianist.

Trouble in Tahiti is a one act opera that Bernstein spent two years writing. “It is a light-weight piece…popular song inspired,” he said. The opera debuted in 1952 at Brandeis University and was produced several times afterwards. Ironically, it has nothing to do with the island of Tahiti. It is the story of an unhappy couple who are battling to keep their marriage alive. In it, the wife happens to see a movie, Trouble in Tahiti.Hence, the title. The opera, presented in the slickly designed Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, starred Alexandra Silber and Nathan Gunn.

On the Town and Trouble in Tahiti were part of a summer schedule at Tanglewood that is full of Bernstein’s works. On July 28, Tanglewood screened the movie West Side Story, Bernstein’s classic movie hit, featuring the songs Tonight, America and Maria. The Boston Symphony played the musical score of the film. Next is the ballet Bernstein wrote with choreographer Jerome Robbins, Fancy Free. That will be performed August 18, featuring the Boston Ballet. That will be followed by a performance of his musical Candide. Numerous other concerts will include his music and songs. There will be some concerts of the work of other composers that he was famous for conducting.

The Bernstein tribute will conclude with gusto the following week on August 25, Bernstein’s birthday, with The Bernstein Centennial Celebration at Tanglewood, that will be broadcast by PBS-TV. The evening will include parts of several of Bernstein’s works, such as Candide, Mass, and West Side Story. It will be hosted by singer Audra McDonald and feature the Boston Symphony. The conductors will be Keith Lockhart, John Williams, Andris Nelsons, Michael Tilson Thomas and Christoph Eschenbach.

“He is most famous for West Side Story, but he composed so much other, and different music and we want to showcase examples of all of his work throughout the summer. We are doing that and it is a pleasure,” said Tony Fogg, the artistic director of the Boston Symphony. “He was a composer, teacher conductor and well, a real force in music. The best way to show him as that force was to perform all of his music, even operas.”

Fogg added that Tanglewood is featuring many pieces or music written by Bernstein that even his fans were not aware. “When you look back over fifty years of music, Lenny produced an enormous amount of superb music,” the administrator said.

Fogg said, too, that Bernstein was a very emotional man whom people the world over connected. “He was larger than life,” said Fogg, “And in classical music there are not too many men and women like that.”

Bernstein began his lifelong relationship with Tanglewood when he was a student at the Berkshire Music Center’s first summer session of classes in 1940. He ended his association with the Western Massachusetts music center in 1990, when he conducted there several months before his death that October. It was his last performance.

He may have died in 1990, but his music will last forever.