Leonard Bernstein
Trouble in Tahiti

Trouble in Tahiti is a brilliant pastiche of pop music and melodrama, showing Leonard Bernstein at his most bitingly ironic, and yet, at the same time, most personal and sincere. Ranging from the jingle-like crooning of the vocal trio to major, show-stopping serio-comic arias for the main characters Sam and Dinah, the music pulls out every pop-cultural 1950s stop, while never losing sight of the genuine pathos of its characters: a couple in a troubled marriage, desperate to find the way back to that 'Quiet Place' of their love for one another.

The reduced orchestration - behind the scenes
A 45-minute, one-act opera, with a small cast of five and minimal staging requirements, Trouble in Tahiti - composed in 1952 - is ideal for intimate venues and small companies. But a tricky obstacle has always been its orchestra - a bare minimum of 26 players (assuming only a string quintet rather than the preferred full string sections).

In creating this new orchestration, writes Garth Sunderland, I wanted to remain faithful to Bernstein's original intentions and the reduction takes a 'one of each' chamber orchestra approach, with a 15 piece instrumentation. While this orchestration, premiered in 2009, cannot be a true substitute for Bernstein's brilliant original, I hope that it might allow more performers and audiences the chance to experience this hilarious, exuberant melancholy opera.

Trouble in Tahiti - a snapshot
The trio croons about the bliss of suburban life as an introduction to Sam's and Dinah's angry breakfast conversation. We then see Sam engaging in questionable dealings at work while Dinah tells her (unseen) psychiatrist of her frustration with her life and her longing to escape to a dream garden, a quiet place. She and Sam accidentally meet on the street and (to their brief regret) avoid lunching together on the pretext of having prior engagements. That afternoon Sam gloats about a handball triumph while Dinah goes to see a film; they both miss their son's school play. Later they try to discuss their problems but give up and go to a film instead - the same escapist fantasy of glamorous exotic love that Dinah had seen earlier in the day, Trouble in Tahiti. The opera was later incorporated in its entirety by Bernstein into the second act of his sequel opera, A Quiet Place (1983/4).

Press Comments

Humphrey Burton (Bernstein's Biographer) on Psappha's production of Trouble in Tahiti
I don't think I have ever seen a better performance of Trouble in Tahiti.  The protagonists were alive to every nuance in the writing and the orchestra was plain terrific.

Hilary Finch (The Times, London)
Elaine Tyler-Hall, directing, showed just how well it (Trouble in Tahiti) could be done even on the stage of a small concert hall like the Queen Elizabeth Hall (Southbank, London). Domestic interior, office, shrink's consulting room, sports centre and cinema: all were conjured out of thin air, a table and a couple of chairs.

Catherine Hopper's Dinah and Dean Robinson's Sam packed plenty of detail and intensity into their portrayals. Hopper's mezzo, well groomed and minutely expressive, is always a treat to hear. And Bernstein's little Andrews Sisters-style vocal trio of ironically commenting mini-chorus was debonair in the voices of Jane Harrington, Ashley Catling and Quentin Hayes.

But the real raison d'être of this performance was to present the London premiere of Garth Sunderland's sparky arrangement of Bernstein's score for 15-piece chamber orchestra - more specifically the Psappha Ensemble.

Conducted by Nicholas Kok, they played it with deft eloquence, drum kit, bass and xylophone upping the beat, string quartet and flute empathising with Dinah's pain, and solo clarinet expressing the couple's unanswered and unanswerable questions.