A Quiet Place

A Quiet Place is a 1983 American opera with music by Leonard Bernstein and a libretto by Stephen Wadsworth. It is a sequel to Bernstein's 1951 opera Trouble in Tahiti. In its original form, A Quiet Place was in one act. Bernstein spoke of it as having a Mahlerian four-section structure. The premiere, conducted in Houston by John DeMain on June 17, 1983, was a double bill: Trouble in Tahiti, intermission, A Quiet Place. In its three-act form, act 2 largely consisted of Trouble in Tahiti in flashback. This form appeared in 1984, with John Mauceri conducting in Milan and Washington. It was refined in 1986 for Vienna, where a recording was made and the composer himself conducted. Performance history The first performance, attended by Bernstein, was on 17 June 1983 at Houston Grand Opera. From The Washington Post, before the premiere: Underlying it all is an orchestral fabric in a wide variety of styles that is of truly symphonic density – the opposite of Trouble in Tahiti. Bernstein compared the four-part shape of the opera to a Mahler symphony in an interview with a Houston critic last week. "The opening scene is huge and explosive. The second is elegaic. The third is a playful scherzo", he said. And the last scene is "one of those adagios", referring to the grave and noble slow movements that conclude works like the Mahler Third and Ninth symphonies. "If the opera is saying anything", he said, "it is saying that anything in life is hard to achieve." Then he added, "including this opera".