Bernstein's air-conditioned urban jungle

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 DC'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, fr West Side Story orchestra and chorus: Leonard Bernstein, cond. DG 415 255

On This Day

Births

• 1813 - American composer and journalist, William Henry Fry, in Philadelphia (see also August 10);

• 1881 - Rumanian composer, violinist, and conductor Georges Enesco (Enescu), in Liveni-Virnaz;

Deaths

• 1929 - Russian ballet impressario Sergei Diaghilev, age 57, in Venice;

Premieres

• 1952 - Ginastera: ballet "Estancia," in Buenos Aires;

• 1957 - Bernstein: musical "West Side Story," as a trial run in Washington, D.C. at the National Theater, choreography and direction by Jerome Robbins, conducted by Max Goberman; The show opened in New York City at the Winter Garden on September 26, 1957;

• 1961 - Peggy Glanville-Hicks: opera "Nausicaa," in Athens, Greece;

• 1988 - Lutoslawski: Piano Concerto, at the Salzburg Festival in Austria;

Others

• 1990 - At Tanglewood, Leonard Bernstein conducts the Boston Symphony in Britten's "Three Sea Interludes" from "Peter Grimes" and Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 at his last concert appearance before his death; On the same program, Carl St. Clair conducted a performance of Bernstein's "Arias and Barcarolles" (as orchestrated by Bright Sheng); The Bernstein-led performances from this concert have been issued on compact disc on the Deutsche Grammophon label.