Multimedia Review

Leonard Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti. Karl Daymond, "Sam"; Stephanie Novacek, "Dinah"; Amir Hosseinpour, choreographer; Paul Daniel, conductor; Tom Cairns, director. 2003. BBC / Opus Arte DVD 0A 0838 D (75 minutes; Picture Format 4:3; Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1; Region 1).

When Leonard Bernstein wrote both lyrics and music for Trouble in Tahiti in 1952, he confected a fusion of opera, musical theater, and television sitcom, inhabiting the realm of hybridity and crossover shaped by composers from George Gershwin and Marc Blitzstein to Kurt Weill. Ned Rorem once called these amalgams "Broadway operas," and Ralph Locke has characterized them as "unsettled" genres, inhabiting a "border territory." Bernstein was clearly energized by the wide-ranging creative opportunities offered by this border, an inclination that culminated in the musical-dramatic spectacle of his controversial Mass in 1971. Yet by venturing into unlabeled realms, he sacrificed the ease of access by performers and audiences that comes when a work clearly fits into a well-established genre.