Instead, the chorus as a whole provides a sort of moral compass it represents the tight-knit community that surrounds the main characters, observing and evaluating their behavior, and pronouncing judgments that are difficult to escape.Īlfieri introduces both the story and one of its major players, Eddie Carbone. Its members don't play a direct part in the action. Often, Alfieri is joined by a chorus, which serves a role similar to that of choruses in classic Greek dramas.

As the drama unfolds, he returns, both as a participant and as a kind of impartial commenator. Washington National Opera Orchestra and ChorusĪs Act One opens, we meet Alfieri - a lawyer who begins to tell the story that's about to be played out.But the issues underlying the story seem both ancient and cut from modern headlines - ranging from the travails of illegal immigrants to ethnic stereotypes to biases surrounding sexual orientation and even the hint of incest. The opera's vibrant setting is the Italian-American neighborhood of Red Hook, in Brooklyn, back in the 1950s. Miller worked on the opera's libretto alongside Bolcom's longtime collaborator, Arnold Weinstein, and they relied on both versions of the play in creating the opera's text. The opera is based on a 1955 play by Arthur Miller, which appeared first as a one-act drama in verse, and then as a full-length, two-act show on Broadway. The little souls of A View from the Bridge are struggling dock workers and their families, some of whom are in the country illegally. And that pretty much hits the nail on the head.īolcom's distinctively American opera is set among immigrants in New York, and its story easily lives up to Puccini's description of his own dramatic style, as one that puts 'great sorrows in little souls.' When William Bolcom's opera A View from the Bridge premiered in Chicago in 1999, one critic described it as 'Brooklyn verismo,' invoking the emotive style popularized by Italian composers such as Puccini.

A view from the bridge play