Jean Kraft
"A Quiet Place" is an American opera in three acts, with music by Leonard Bernstein to a libretto by Stephen Wadsworth. The work is a sequel to Bernstein's 1951 short opera Trouble in Tahiti. In its initial form A Quiet Place was in one act; the premiere, on June 17, 1983, was a double bill: Trouble in Tahiti, intermission, A Quiet Place. In its three-act form, which appeared in 1984, Act Two of A Quiet Place largely consists of Trouble in Tahiti in flashback. This is a German Television broadcast of the 1986 Vienna State Opera production, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
The Metropolitan Opera's performance of "Hansel and Gretel" features music by Engelbert Humperdinck and is conducted by Thomas Fulton. The Met's storybook production cheerfully evokes a magic world of woodland sprites and candy dreams and yet brings as well the entire apparatus of Wagnerian music and drama to bear on a German fairy tale. This production is sung in English, and features the Metropolitan Opera, Chorus, and Ballet.
Plácido Domingo accomplishes the rare feat of singing both leads on the same night at the Met in 1978 on opera's most popular double-bill.
