Scarlet Masque Theatre Journal New Beginnings and Fond Farewells Vol. 1 | Page 37

gang within the production, Bernstein provides the audience with a very real example of
social conflict that is portrayed within the score itself. Examples such as the mambo, or
“Cool,” represent Bernstein’s compositional affinity towards jazz and providing a very
fresh take on a sub-genre founded on the styles of shows like Oklahoma (Norton,
2014).
As can be seen, New York opera provided a break from certain conventions of
operatic performance that made the genre itself more accessible and pushed the
boundaries of what exactly opera can be defined as. A heavy reliance on utilizing both
score and dialogue, rather than recitative, to further the narrative represents a stark
difference from traditional, and more grandiose opera at the time. Furthermore, it
allowed composers to represent various different demographics—from the Corn Belt to
Manhattan—while providing compelling stories that were heightened by the music
rather than ornamented. By rejecting the European operatic conventions, New York
opera was unsurprisingly very American, as can be discerned from previous examples.
New York opera, by relying heavily on acting over vocal abilities and also placing the
utmost emphasis on the interrelationship between score and libretto, became a very
American and unique operatic sub-genre that functioned to represent the everyman in
opera within New York City, America’s most prominent venue.
The real importance within New York opera as a sub-genre lies within its
discrepancies with traditional opera upon its creation as well as its impacts on the
compositional establishment of modern musical theatre. Such an example of these
effects is composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim, who studied with both
Oscar Hammerstein, Milton Babbitt, and Bernstein—titans of both the New York opera
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