IT IS easy to sniff at English National Opera’s decision to stage Leonard Bernstein’s first, unashamedly Broadway musical. Unlike some of his later work it has no “operatic” pretensions. But the Broadway musical was a continuation of opera by other means, and Bernstein maintained to the end of his life that, if opera had a future (which he doubted), it would be intimately tied up with the Broadway idiom that he helped to create.
Leonard Bernstein
On the town
Robert Thicknesse [Times Online, 11 Mar 05]
IT IS easy to sniff at English National Opera's decision to stage Leonard Bernstein's first, unashamedly Broadway musical. Unlike some of his later work it has no "operatic" pretensions. But the Broadway musical was a continuation of opera by other means, and Bernstein maintained to the end of his life that, if opera had a future (which he doubted), it would be intimately tied up with the Broadway idiom that he helped to create.
The question with On the Town was what ENO thought that it could bring to the party with 17 performances which, say, a nine-month run in the West End could not.