Triple-Sec

File:Texas Guinan Warner (cropped).jpg

In a prologue in front of the curtain, the Hostess (modeled on Texas Guinan) introduces the work, speaking to a dinner theater audience that has had too much to drink.{{sfn|Pollack|2012|page=55}}{{cite book|page=397|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofam0000wlas/page/397|first=Ken|last=Wlaschin|author-link=Ken Wlaschin|title=Encyclopedia of American Opera|isbn=9781476612386|location=Jefferson, N.C.|publisher=McFarland|year=2024|access-date=March 9, 2025}}

Setting: The library of the townhouse of Lord Rupert Silverside.

Lord Silverside's maid Hopkins and his butler Perkins are discussing the forthcoming wedding of their employer as they tidy up the library. The Stranger appears, wanting to speak to Lord Silverside. The domestics ask the Stranger to leave. Lord Silverside arrives with his fiancée, Lady Betty. The Stranger reveals she is already married to Lord Silverside. Lady Betty faints at this revelation. The opera ends while efforts are made to revive Lady Betty.{{sfn|Gordon|1989|p=38}}

Blitzstein attended a production in Philadelphian of Paul Hindemith's opera Hin und zurück (Back and Forth) in 1928, writing a review of it for Modern Music.{{cite journal|last=Blitzstein|first=Marc|author-link=Marc Blitzstein|title=Hin und zurück in Philadelphia|journal=Modern Music|volume=5|issue=4|date=May–June 1928|location=New York|publisher=League of Composers|pages=34–36|url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015009112346|access-date=March 9, 2025}} Blitzstein modeled Triple-Sec after Hindemith's opera.{{cite journal|title=There and Back Again: Zeitoper and the Transatlantic Search for a Uniquely American Opera in the 1920s|journal=Journal of the Society for American Music|last=Gabriel|first=John|volume=13|issue=2|year=2019|doi=10.1017/S1752196319000075|pages=195–215}} The opera was written in the summer of 1928 while Blitzstein was resident at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.{{sfn|Gabriel|2019|p=197}}

"Part way through there are suddenly two of each character. As the vision of the audience becomes more imperfectly focused there are three identical Lady Bettys and three maids named Hopkins. By the time the curtain is ready to fall, there are seven [butlers] named Perkins."{{cite magazine|magazine=Musical America|last=Smith|first=Cecil|title=Jumping Frog Shares Bill with Bach and Blitzstein|date=June 1950|volume=70|issue=7|location=New York|url=https://archive.org/details/sim_musical-america_1950-06_70_7/page/11|pages=11, 35|access-date=March 9, 2025}}

The opera is scored for one violin, one viola, one double bass, two clarinets, one bassoon, one trumpet, one trombone, timpani, snare drum, xylophone, ratchet, bass drum, woodblock, cowbell, tambourine, and piano.{{cite web|ref={{harvid|Schott Music|2015a}}|location=Mainz, Germany|publisher=Schott Music|date=2015a|title=Triple-Sec|type=score|url=https://www.schott-music.com/en/triple-sec-no331541.html|access-date=March 9, 2025}}

The piano–vocal score was published at Mainz in February 1931 by the German music publisher B. Schott's Söhne.{{sfn|Pollack|2012|page=58}} The holographic score is held by the New York Public Library.{{sfn|Griffel|2013|p=507}}

File:BellevueStratford.jpg

Triple-Sec premiered May 6, 1929, in the ballroom of the Bellevue-Stratford Hotel in Philadelphia, conducted by Alexander Smallens.{{sfn|Griffel|2013|p=307}} James Light directed and Louis Simon designed the costumes.{{sfn|Pollack|2012|page=57}} Ruth Montague was the Hostess, Ethel Niethammer was Perkins the maid, Ralph Jusko was Hopkins the butler, Maybelle Marston was the Stranger, Albert Mahler was Lord Rupert Silverside, and Irene Williams was Lady Betty.{{sfn|Pollack|2012|page=57}} The Society for Contemporary Music sponsored the program, which included Alfredo Casella's Pupazzetti and Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot lunaire.{{sfn|Pollack|2012|page=57}} The Philadelphia Record review said it was "not so funny" (even if the audience laughed) and was "crude . . . its extravagance rather pureile and its origins may be traced to Stravinsky and the Metropolitan's freak opera Jonny spielt auf," which had played at the Met in January 1929.{{cite news|last=Craven|first=H. T.|title=Marc Blitzstein’s Operatic Satire Rocks Ballroom|work=Philadelphia Record|date=May 7, 1929}}, quoted in Gordon 1989, p. 45. The Musical Leader wrote "the music was extremely successful–vulgar, dissonant, rhythmically effective and well orchestrated. it had just the streak of commonplace American jazz treated with a highly sophisticated modern technic and a successful sense of humor. it demonstrated indisputably the fact that Marc Blitzstein has talent."{{cite magazine|author=|magazine=The Musical Leader|page=10|location=Chicago|publisher=Florence French|date=May 16, 1929|volume=56|issue=20|title=New Opera Farce by American Artist with Revolutionary Ideas|url=https://hdl.handle.net/2027/nyp.33433085222523?urlappend=%3Bseq=508%3Bownerid=118657074-506|access-date=March 9, 2025}}

While visiting Germany in 1929, his publishers assured him a German production was likely and Blitzstein met with representatives of Darmstadt's opera–but no production occurred in Germany until 2015.{{sfn|Gabriel|2019|p=198}}

The third version of the revue Garrick Gaieties brought Triple-Sec to Broadway in 1930 as the first segment in the second act.{{sfn|Pollack|2012|page=58}} Directed by Philip Loeb, the show opened at the Guild Theatre on June 4.{{cite book|title=A Chronology of American Musical Theater|last=Norton|first=Richard C.|location=New York|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2002|ISBN=9780195088885|volume=2|pages=612–13|url=https://archive.org/details/chronologyofamer0000nort/page/612|access-date=March 9, 2025}} The cast included Ruth Montague as the Hostess, Jane Sherman as Perkins, James Norris as Hopkins, Ray Heatherton as Lord Rupert Silverside, Ruth Chorpenning as the Stranger, and Imogene Coca as the third Lady Betty.{{cite book|last=Dietz|first=Dan|title=The Complete Book of 1930s Broadway Musicals|location=Lanham, Maryland|publisher=Rowman & Littlefield|year=2018|page=40|isbn=9781538102770|url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Complete_Book_of_1930s_Broadway_Musi/L0hNDwAAQBAJ|access-date=March 9, 2025}} Steven Suskin wrote the show ran 170 performances, being "favorably received despite its avant-garde nature"; yet The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians said both the show and the opera were "critical failures."{{cite book|title=Show Tunes, 1905-1985: The Songs, Shows, and Careers of Broadway's Major Composers|first=Steven|last=Suskin|author-link=Steven Suskin|location=New York|publisher=Dodd, Mead|year=1986|page=318|edition=1st|url=https://archive.org/details/showtunes19051980000susk/page/318|access-date=March 9, 2025}}{{cite book|last=Dietz|first=Robert J.|chapter=Marc Blitzstein|title=The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians|year=1980|location=London|publisher=Macmillan|volume=2|page=795|editor-last1=Sadie|editor-first1=Stanley|editor-link1=Stanley Sadie|ISBN=0333231112|url=https://archive.org/details/newgrovedictiona0002unse_b8w6/|access-date=March 9, 2025}} Garrick closed October 8, 1930.{{sfn|Dietz|2018|p=39}}

Triple-Sec was revived by Richard Flusser's After Dinner Opera Company on June 7, 1950, at the Master Theatre, Riverside Drive at 103rd Street in New York City.{{cite news|work=The New York Times|author=C.H.|title=3 One-Act Operas Given Here: Works by Bach, Blitzstein, and Foss Offered|date=June 8, 1950|page=37|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1950/06/08/89735575.html?pageNumber=37|access-date=March 9, 2025}} The company's four performances were on a triple bill with Johann Sebastian Bach's Coffee Cantata staged as an opera called Grounds for Divorce and Lukas Foss's opera The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, which had premiered earlier that year at Indiana University.{{sfn|Smith|1950|page=11}} Musical America said Triple-Sec was "so zestful and so well written that it has not dated at all."{{sfn|Smith|1950|p=35}} Flusser's company then performed Triple-Sec on college campuses.{{sfn|Gordon|1989|p=347}}

Triple-Sec was performed at the 1951 Berkshire Music Festival at Tanglewood.{{sfn|Schott Music|2015a}} The Juilliard Opera Theatre performed the opera the same year.{{cite book|title=Marc Blitzstein: A Bio-Bibliography|first=Leonard|last=Lehrman|author-link=Leonard Lehrman|year=2005|ISBN=0313300275|location=Westport, Connecticut|publisher=Praeger|series=Bio-bibliographies in Music, no. 99|page=179}} Gustav Meier conducted a performance during the 1958 Berkshire Music Festival as part of an all-Blitzstein program on July 25.{{sfn|Gordon|1989|p=443}} The New School's Opera Workshop, directed by Flusser and Emanuel Levenson, presented the opera on May 26, 1967.{{cite news|last=Hughes|first=Allen|title=New School Opera Workshop Offers Blitzstein's 'Triple Sec'|work=The New York Times|date=May 27, 1967|page=17|url=https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1967/05/27/90345606.html?pageNumber=17|access-date=March 14, 2025}}

The European premiere was in Berlin on March 14, 2015, produced by the Konzerthaus Berlin and the Komische Oper Berlin and given at the Konzerthaus.{{cite web|date=March 12, 2015b|title=Intoxicating opera: European premiere of Marc Blitzstein's Triple-Sec|url= https://en.schott-music.com/intoxicating-opera-european-premiere-of-marc-blitzsteins-triple-sec/|location=Mainz, Germany|publisher=Schott Music|ref={{harvid|Schott Music|2015b}}|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190407191135/https://en.schott-music.com/intoxicating-opera-european-premiere-of-marc-blitzsteins-triple-sec/ |archive-date=April 7, 2019 |access-date=March 11, 2025}} Evan Christ conducted.{{sfn|Schott Music|2015b}} The production was part of the Festival Mythos shown on a double-bill with George Gershwin's jazz opera Blue Monday.{{sfn|Gabriel|2019|p=198}}

The Curtis Institute of Music, Blitzstein's alma mater, on November 11, 2021, gave a performance on a double-bill with Gian Carlo Menotti's 1946 opera The Medium.{{sfn|Schott Music|2015a}} WHYY-TV's "On Stage with Curtis" broadcast a program about the staging of this production.{{cite web|website=PBS|author=WHYY-TV|author-link=WHYY-TV|url=https://www.pbs.org/video/behind-the-scenes-of-the-medium-and-triple-sec-movie-qbqgcb/|access-date=March 9, 2025|date=January 20, 2023|title=On Stage with Curtis: Behind the Scenes of The Medium and Triple-Sec, season 17, episode 12}} Curtis again gave the two operas on February 10, 2024.{{cite web|publisher=Curtis Institute of Music|ref={{harvid|Curtis|2024}}|title=Triple-Sec/The Medium|location=Philadelphia|url=https://www.curtis.edu/event/the-medium-triple-sec-20240210-1/|access-date=March 9, 2025|year=2024}} Joseph Mechavich conducted and Alek Shrader directed.{{sfn|Curtis|2024}} In April 2024, the Mannes School of Music at The New School presented Triple-Sec, its inspiration

Hin und zurück, and six other short operas at Ernst C. Stiefel Hall in Manhattan.{{cite web|url=https://event.newschool.edu/flashpointsfestivalofshortoper|title=Flashpoints~the Mannes festival of short operas|date=2024|access-date=March 14, 2025|location=New York|publisher=The New School|website=The New School Events|author=Mannes School of Music|author-link=Mannes School of Music}}

File:Imogene Coca.jpg

{{reflist}}

• {{YouTube|gux1jWbeGb0|Audio}}, performance of Triple-Sec at Juilliard Opera Theater, 1951
• {{IBDB show|id=11124|title=Garrick Gaieties|description=(1930)}}

Category:Operas

Category:1929 operas

Category:Operas by Marc Blitzstein

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