Bernstein's air-conditioned urban jungle

Composers Datebook

Synopsis

If you were in Washington, D.C. on today’s date in 1957, and wanted to escape the summer heat, tickets for a new musical at the air-conditioned National Theater would run you between $1.10 and $5.50 — and you could boast for years afterwards that you attended the world premiere performance of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story.

Actually, the three-week trial run of West Side Story at D.C.’s National Theater was a hot ticket. The premiere attracted a fashionable crowd of Washington elite as well as those who trained or planed their way to the national’s capitol to catch the latest work of America’s musical “boy wonder” — the 38-year old Leonard Bernstein.

Even so, The Washington Post reported Bernstein was able to wander the lobby at intermission largely unrecognized — to eavesdrop on audience reaction. One woman who did recognize him identified herself as a former social worker in a rough neighborhood like the one depicted in his musical. “It's all so real, so true,” she told Bernstein. “It chills my blood to remember.”

Bernstein was a little taken aback. “It isn’t meant to be realistic,” he said. “Poetry — poetry set to music — that’s what we were trying to do.”

But gang violence as the subject for a musical was shocking to 1957 audiences. When the show opened on Broadway, the New York Times expressed its impact as follows: “Although the material is horrifying, the workmanship is admirable … West Side Story is a profoundly moving show.”

Music Played in Today's Program

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990): Prologue from West Side Story; orchestra and chorus; Leonard Bernstein, conductor; DG 415 255