Although many have speculated as to which genre West Side Story belongs – it is a musical that at times requires vocal skills often demanded of opera singers. Bernstein wrote for the voice with a keen understanding of how drama becomes heightened through music. Since West Side Story broke the mould of traditional musical comedy, the vocal demands are equally non-traditional. By examining the vocal writing, one can understand Bernstein’s sense of character and how each musical number propels the story through song.

The main singing roles of Maria, Tony, Anita, and Riff require two classically trained ‘legit’ singers for Maria and Tony, and two Broadway belt/character voices for Anita and Riff. Bernstein divides the solo material so that the majority of singing falls to the star-crossed lovers, which leaves less singing for Riff and Anita, but more room for dance to be incorporated into their performances. Although Bernstein writes sensitively for each kind of singer, occasionally the vocal categories blur. At times, Anita is required to perform in a more classical style as in the ‘Tonight’ Quintet and ‘I Have a Love’. Tony also has moments of standard Broadway belt mix in his solos ‘Something’s Coming’ and in the ‘Tonight’ (Quintet). Bernstein’s use of the voice paves the way for the modern musical, where composers write less for a particular kind of voice and expect the singer–actor to be able to sing in many different kinds of styles.

The Vocal Writing in West Side Story

In the opening scenes of the show, Bernstein sets up a strong vocal contrast between Riff and Tony. The ‘Jet Song’, led by Riff, begins seamlessly from underscored dialogue. This integration of speech into song helps Riff ease into song from his extended speech about Tony’s loyalty. The song’s opening lines are set in a typical mid-range that allows for the baritone (or bari-tenor) to easily start pitching speech instead of creating a full tone. Bernstein recognised the importance of the singer–actor being able to deliver text and have its meaning carry from the stage into the theatre. Although rhythmically challenging for a singer, the use of hemiola allows for Riff to separate his words, using strong rhythmic accents that create the impression of a rough, streetwise gang leader. When Riff’s line eases into a tune (‘You’re never alone … ’) in 6/8 time, the line suggests a jazzy swing with angular intervals. Moving through these vocal register shifts in a melody with such wide intervals can make the voice sound rough. This is because of the constant transitions between the low and high range of the voice. The actor may also choose to carry the chest register up past this transition to create a strong belt sound, as in the phrase ‘You’re well protected’, which takes Riff to his highest solo note in the show, an F4.

With the change of scene, Tony sings in a completely different vocal style in ‘Something’s Coming’. In contrast to Riff’s angular, loud, and rhythmic melody, Tony starts at a pianissimo volume in falsetto and then simply holds a note for several bars. As the song develops, Tony sings in eager rhythmic articulation, but the melodic line follows a smoother trajectory. This allows the voice to create a steady flow of tone without abrupt register shifts. Like his friend Riff, Tony has moments of sung speech with ‘It may come cannonballing … ’ or ‘I got a feeling’ on the second verse, as the line swells to a fortissimo E4 sustained over eight bars. However, despite his impetuous arc into sustained high notes, both Tony and Maria always quieten down from such crescendi, as can be heard later in their duets ‘Tonight’ and ‘One Hand, One Heart’. This is true for Tony in his first number, as he continues to have moments of sotto voce that swell into broad phrases, which Bernstein indicates should be sung ‘warmly, freely’. Despite the swell, the song concludes as it starts, again pianissimo and sotto voce, sounding unresolved, so as to leave the question ‘Who knows?’ lingering in the air, unanswered.

It is easy to compare the structure of ‘Maria’ to a bel canto operatic tenor aria. The expanded structure of Tony’s solos ‘Something’s Coming’ combined with ‘Maria’ reflects the traditional form of a flowing cavatina followed by a fiery cabaletta, separated by ‘A Dance at the Gym’. Naturally, Bernstein understood such operatic forms and knew how to sustain a steady musical build up for maximum dramatic effect. Beginning with a gentle recitative style as Tony learns Maria’s name, Bernstein bridges the transition into the aria-like section through a gentle melodic pull first with Tony singing ‘Maria’ on a perfect fourth, then the next phrase as a perfect fifth, and finally the glorious tritone, which seems both unexpected and bent towards tonal resolution. The challenge vocally, of course, is to maintain accurate pitch on the changing, wide intervals. As Tony continues into the Moderato con anima section the melody becomes stepwise and more lyrical. This scalar movement allows for the singer to create a smoother legato and richer tone, especially as Bernstein moves the melody through the singer’s passaggio and into a higher tessitura.

The passaggio literally means ‘passage’ in Italian and the term applies to the transition from one register, or area of the voice, to another. Singers experience a specific kind of vocal production in one register and an altered or totally different production in another, dependent upon the degree of tension in the thyroarytenoid muscles and changes to the vocal fold length and vibration. Vocal pedagogue Cornelius Reid noted: ‘The smooth and easy negotiation of the passaggio without the loss of range, resonance, or flexibility is the hallmark of technical mastery.’³ Because of the stepwise writing in ‘Maria’, Tony transitions smoothly into a head dominant tone without too much exposure of a register shift. Shifting between registers in musical theatre requires the performer to decide how to shift in a way that supports the character. Tony often sounds more operatic at this point because that is what is needed for efficient vocal production; for most actors using a belt sound in this range could potentially damage the voice during long runs of the show. Delaying a transition from chest voice into a head dominant voice produces a belt or belt-mix that has an extremely different sound than transitioning earlier into a dominant head register, which produces a more classical tone.

Bernstein’s overall trajectory for ‘Maria’ follows a similar pattern as Tony’s first solo. As with ‘Something’s Coming’, the first broad crescendo in ‘Maria’ ends abruptly with a subito piano indicated for the lyric ‘say it soft and it’s almost like praying’. Dramatically, it helps rein in the dynamics so that the second, broader crescendo can move to the climax of the song. Vocally, it is an opportunity for the singer to relax any tension and sing with less pressure by using his falsetto (if desired) before he returns to the next section of intense singing. Falsetto singing eases the stress at this point because only a portion of the vocal folds are in contact, as opposed to full voice when the folds are in full contact and vibrate their full vocal length. At the climactic moment, Bernstein’s score indicates that he originally wrote a B♭4 to be sustained at a forte over three bars at the climax of the song. In the iconic Deutsche Grammophon recording of ‘Maria’ performed by José Carreras, he sustained the B♭4 effortlessly under the baton of Bernstein. Likewise, musical theatre tenor Matt Cavenaugh sailed through this sustained B♭4 in the 2009 revival. However, most singers prefer to sing the ossia line that allows them to sing several shorter phrases and at lower pitches. This line proves a bit less strenuous and allows brief pauses of relaxation in a very high range. Following this second crescendo, Tony once again ends in subito piano and falsetto, creating an overall boy soprano effect, reminiscent of an innocent prayer.

Following ‘Maria’, Tony has a brief exchange of dialogue with Maria that sets up the ‘Balcony Scene’ duet. This is the third singing number in a row that involves Tony. Following his pseudo-cavatina/cabaletta aria, Tony now sings an extensive duet with Maria. It is important that the singer–actor paces himself through these three numbers, so that he has the stamina to maintain a consistent tone and perform the nuanced dynamics required in these three songs.

Tony has a brief vocal break at the start of the ‘Balcony Scene’, when Bernstein gives Maria an opportunity to start the duet with a solo section. Once again, Bernstein grows the solo vocal line out of spoken word and he suggests Maria begins ‘freely’ at a low dynamic level. A common speaking tone for most female voices begins around A3, and Bernstein sets her starting note only a half-step higher at B♭3. This allows for the drama to be more integrated from the spoken word into singing, and slowly allows the audience to alter how they listen to the words, which makes the text more understandable and the singing more believable. Her melodic line creates a beautiful arc into her passaggio and then gracefully descends. This rise and fall of the melody naturally encourages a dynamic swell in the middle of the phrase. These opening solo lines encourage use of the head voice and legato singing, and in this soprano range the voice sounds light, giving the impression of a soubrette or ingénue. The duet builds in anticipation as Tony interrupts Maria, followed by Maria interrupting, or overlapping, Tony’s line prior to their first kiss.

With the start of the molto allegro section, Maria begins again with a solo. Her melodic line broadens into longer phrases that linger in her middle voice, eventually rising into the upper range of her passaggio. Sondheim’s ‘simple’ lyrics help Maria sing fewer consonants and more vowels as she leaps from the vowel [i] of ‘on-ly’ on F4 into D5, F5, and E♭5 on the words ‘you to-night’. This proves to be another ‘operatic’ moment in West Side Story, because the text cannot be Maria’s first priority at this moment. She needs to focus on creating a consistently free tone as she moves into her upper register. It is harder to maintain clarity in the lyric because ‘ … vowels must be modified for the resonator (vocal tract) to work efficiently’.⁴ Also, using head register dominance for a vocal line that hangs in this tessitura allows for efficient breath flow, especially over sustained notes. The classically trained singer will most likely choose to modify the diphthong vowel in the word ‘say’ and ‘today’ so that the F5 and G♭5 can be sustained on a modified ‘eh’ without spreading the mouth, causing loss of air and tonal focus.

The duet continues in a restatement of Maria’s ‘Tonight’ solo material, this time sung in unison octaves. Tony, most likely a tenor or bari-tenor, must face similar issues of shifting registers and potentially modifying vowels as he moves into the higher tessitura. Maintaining breath energy, a clear and precise tone, and singing with expression requires adequate vocal technique. Actors cast as Tony must understand how to shift vocal registers seamlessly in order to give consistent performances throughout the run. The conclusion of the duet offers one final challenge to the singers – they end in pianissimo, perhaps suggesting a blissful whisper that floats into the clouds as both soprano and tenor are required to sustain a dolcissimo A♭5. This kind of vocal float can be achieved more easily by the tenor if he flips into falsetto, but the soprano needs both relaxation and agility to support her intonation at such a low dynamic level in this range. Although Bernstein wrote for the singers to be in unison, it is common for Tony to conclude this duet a perfect fourth lower on E♭4. This is certainly an understandable adjustment in light of the vocal load for Tony thus far in the show.

The next two musical numbers, ‘America’ and ‘Cool’ (their order in the Broadway/stage musical adaptation), remind us that this show is not an opera but a musical. The style of singing is markedly different than that of Tony and Maria and there are definite elements of comedy interspersed. Bernstein attempts to create a Latin-sounding vocal number with ‘America’. Sondheim noted that the original scene conceived by Arthur Laurents was to have been an argument between Anita and Bernardo, ‘then Jerry Robbins said he didn’t want boys in this dance … “all girls”’.⁵ Of course, in both movies this number returned to Laurents’s original concept and included Bernardo and the other members of the Shark gang.

In the stage version, ‘America’ includes solos for Rosalia and Anita with the Shark girls as ensemble. The vocal style depends of course upon the casting, but in most recordings this number is sung with an affected Puerto Rican accent, which often results in a nasal tone and bright chest dominant sound. Most of the melodic material is in a possible belt range for both altos and sopranos. In this ensemble, Anita sings the lowest line and Rosalia tends to remain in a more mezzo-soprano range. Rosalia’s solo is usually performed in a mix of head and chest register, with a sense of legato. Bernstein suggests that she sings ‘nostalgically’ of Puerto Rico, while Anita repeats Rosalia’s melody ‘mockingly’, and thereby creates a speech-like character sound that can be quite pointed and marcato. Anita opens into a full belt on her subito forte line, ‘I like the island Manhattan … ’ This strong tone creates an energetic transition into the ‘Tempo di Huapango’ vocal ensemble of Anita and the Shark girls (except Rosalia). This is clearly written in a way that allows the performers to both dance and sing. Vocal phrases are short and rhythmic, with little or no sustained singing, which allows for more manageable air flow while executing challenging choreography.

‘Cool’ provides a stark contrast to ‘America’ by situating the two gangs (as noted above, the Shark men appear in the film versions of ‘America’) in back-to-back group numbers. The Jets sing in more of a contemporary pop or musical theatre tone as opposed to the more classically trained sounds of Tony and Maria. With the intent to calm his gang, Riff begins ‘almost whispered’ as he speak-sings the opening lines of the number. The vocal style remains consistent for Riff to what he did in the ‘Jets Song’, but this time there is a definite swung, jazz style. Bernstein marks the tempo as ‘Solid and boppy’, which gives Riff the opportunity to use both smooth and rhythmic articulations of the text. On the fuller, longer notes, Riff can also embellish the tone with some vibrato as is consistent with the big band style popular songs of the 1930s and 40s. The vocals at the start of this number clearly lead into the extended dance section, followed by a reprise of the opening lines by the ensemble, and ending with Riff returning to his whispered, falsetto singing at the end.

After two traditional musical theatre songs, Bernstein returns to semi-operatic writing with ‘One Hand, One Heart’. Sondheim explains that this was previously an instrumental tune that Bernstein wrote for Candide, but strictly in dotted half notes: ‘I had to ask Lenny for more notes.’⁶ Thankfully, Bernstein included a few more quarter notes to give Sondheim the opportunity to write more words, and the performers more melody to sing, which propels the text. Since this is the wedding scene at the dress shop, both Tony and Maria speak their vows. Tony’s opening solo line responds to Maria’s spoken text and continues the profession of vows in song in a dolce piano tone. The first phrase arcs to C♭4 on ‘hands’, to D♭4 on ‘hearts’, and to E♭4 on ‘vows’. Because of the close stepwise progression and repeated pitches, the overall line of the melody is intuitively easier for a singer to sing legato. When the register changes are gradual, the tone remains consistent. Throughout this duet Maria must float the voice in the passaggio on G♭5 and Tony often moves to falsetto on G♭4. Following the instrumental interlude, Bernstein modulates on the reprise from G♭ to A♭, so Maria floats a step higher, to A♭5. Tony’s melodic writing moves down to a falsetto F4 and ends on a low A♭3. Intonation in sustained soft singing is always challenging, but the soft high notes again seem to lift these lovers into their dreams and out of reality.

The blaring horns of the next musical number awaken both the audience and the dreamers as the plot turns to the ‘Tonight’ (Quintet). If the director chooses to have both gangs sing in addition to Bernardo and Riff, this is the only number that involves almost the full company. Unlike other musicals which include some full company number in both acts, often bookended at the beginning and ends of acts, this number appears in the middle of the show at the height of tension. This ‘Fast and rhythmic’ agitated ensemble opens in a speech-like range with little pitch movement for the opening gang’s phrases. Sung marcato (with a marked accent), it is easy to understand the text, whether sung by a solo voice or the entire gang. Also, it is interesting that the same melodic structure appears for both gangs. In some way, Bernstein helps to unify these two groups and suggest that such emotion reflects the overall human condition, regardless of race.

In contrast to the shouting quality of the gangs, Anita sings with a sultry articulation, but still maintains the same shifting rhythmic patterns as the gang ensemble. Although the meter shifts are written to follow a natural speech pattern of the text, Anita has to make those shifting rhythmic patterns sound relaxed and easy, while still singing accurately. Following Anita, Tony sings a reprise of ‘Tonight’ from the earlier ‘Balcony Scene’. Much of the prior dynamic shaping returns to these long phrases, but his solo section ends on a broad crescendo on ‘night’. Interrupting Tony’s reverie, Riff reintroduces the gang counter-motive to ‘Tonight’. Following Riff’s solo, the two motives (gang vs lovers) build intricately into a quintet that is clearly the most contrapuntal and harmonic vocal section of the entire show. With the harmony shifting every two bars or fewer, the ensemble needs to be keenly aware of the chromaticism of each vocal line in order to shift in tune with each other. Bernstein’s dynamic markings provide guidance to the storytelling, as if to shift the scene from one location to another while the group sings together. Therefore, the performers must be sensitive to their dynamics so that they know when the focus is on their story and when it is not. The climactic ending has a driving crescendo throughout the ensemble, with every voice ending at the top of its range, including Maria who sustains a C6 for the last four bars.

Following ‘The Rumble’, ‘I Feel Pretty’ provides a fresh start in Act II and breathes some momentary hope and light into the tragedy. This number features Maria and the three girls at the dress shop: Consuelo, Rosalia, and Francisca. Set in 3/8 time, the music feels like a fast waltz, and Bernstein indicates that Maria should begin singing ‘with pulse’. Since dialogue precedes the singing, Bernstein starts Maria in her speaking range, and much of this melody lies in a more speak-singing range. Her friends respond to Maria’s solo by teasing her, and often the tone is a bit nasalised and pointed. Future productions of West Side Story will need to carefully evaluate this number and other ‘exotic’ treatment of the Puerto Ricans, whether through exaggerated accents, or other stereotypes. Certainly, singers cast in these roles should accurately represent this ethnic group and perform with cultural authenticity. While singing in Puerto Rican dialects, there is a different vowel formation and resonant space than what is typical of bel canto vocal training. Since Bernstein did not consciously write for the Latinx voice, musical directors and vocal coaches must be aware of and sensitive to these differences.

The ‘Ballet Sequence’ involves two singing sections. The first is a brief duet between Tony and Maria, which begins the ballet. These few lines definitely seem to be lifted out of an opera. Both characters sing in a middle to high range in long phrases. Since Bernstein is knowingly guiding us into a dream sequence, this heightened delivery of text seems absolutely appropriate. ‘Somewhere’ also appears in the ballet and is performed by ‘A Girl’. Whoever is cast to sing this solo needs to feel comfortable singing such an exposed line. Maintaining accurate intonation in these wide intervals is challenging at the least, especially with the orchestra responding in canon to the vocal line. Yet the vulnerability of this bare vocal line beautifully mirrors the plight of the young lovers. When the lush chords of the orchestra finally move homophonically with the voice, the result is transcendent on ‘Someday, Somewhere’ and ‘Somehow, Someday, Somewhere!’ The last two lines of the song conclude the ballet, this time shared by Tony and then Maria. Bernstein begins and ends the ballet with their voices, bringing them back to their tragic reality.

In the original stage production, ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ follows the ballet. The song’s vaudevillian slapstick continues an emotional roller coaster, careening the story from the ballet’s tragedy into comedy. Conceived as a comedic social commentary that parodies the gang members’ plight as juvenile delinquents, the vocal lines are basically sung speech, often in character voices. For example, Bernstein’s score indicates that Baby John put his voice in falsetto when he pretends to be the social worker. Also, since this is an extremely physical number, the phrases need to be short enough to allow for adequate breath when needed.

Although ‘Krupke’ brings high energy into the show, the true ‘11 o’clock’ number lies in ‘A Boy Like That/I Have a Love’ duet between Anita and Maria. This was the only number for which Sondheim wrote all of the lyrics first, then Bernstein set the text to music. For the most part, according to Sondheim, other musical numbers developed collaboratively between the two, with a constant interchange of textual ideas and melodies.⁷ The stakes are high as the tempo starts Allegro con fuoco. Anita must find a steely quality in her belt voice to maintain volume and resonance in the low pitches at the start. The metric shifts between 4/4, 3/4, and 3/2 create a rhythmic ambiguity that heightens the tension and escalates the conflict. Also, each of Anita’s phrases end with a driving crescendo. When singing the role of Anita, one needs to establish a pace of this intensity to avoid vocal tension but still invest emotionally, without compromising her stamina. Anita’s solo culminates in a sustained D♭5 on the words ‘heart’ and ‘smart’, which allows her to sing on an ‘ah’ vowel and gives her more flexibility in how to focus her tone. She could sing it in a mix, full-on belt, or more of a twang to achieve the necessary crescendo.

The dramatic contrast between the two women’s voices further illustrates the conflict. Anita’s belting can only be subdued by Maria’s operatic high notes. Rhythmically, Anita continues with her earlier motives over which Maria sustains longer and higher notes. As the duet continues into Maria’s solo, ‘I Have a Love’, the tessitura drops so that she can now sing more calmly. The ascending sevenths are challenging leaps for accurate intonation, but such an interval truly sounds like yearning in the voice. At the con espansione end of the solo, Maria’s vocal writing turns more operatic with higher tessitura and longer sustained phrases. Her last note of a sustained G5 over four bars breaks Anita’s anger, and the two reconcile by singing in thirds and unison. Such a consonant ending offers a final glimpse of comfort and hope, at least for the two characters.

The last moment of singing occurs in the ‘Finale’, as Maria cradles the dying Tony who sings, ‘Hold my hand and we’re halfway there … ’ Maria joins him with, ‘Hold my hand and I’ll take you there somehow … ’ Tony dies in song as Maria continues, ‘Someday!’ then ‘falters and stops’. Indeed, singing takes over when spoken text can no longer express the heightened emotional state. It would seem awkward to break into an a cappella singing at another point in the story, but as a brief reprise of a hope that could not be realised in their world, this is the perfect end to a dreamer’s life.

The Voices of West Side Story

Bernstein’s vocal writing in West Side Story created a descriptive road map for character development and provided a crucial element to the storytelling. There are three specific performances that offer vastly different interpretations of this vocal map: the original Broadway cast recording, the 1984 recording conducted by Bernstein himself with opera singers, and the 2009 bilingual Broadway revival. Additionally, the 2021 movie built upon ideas from the 2009 revival and further developed vocal color and interpretation.

Both of the Broadway recordings were sung by performers who in some way are ‘triple threats’, capable of acting, singing, and dancing the role. Often in singing callbacks for the roles in West Side Story, the groups of performers could be divided between ‘singers who act’ or ‘actors who sing’. The principal roles of Tony, Maria, Anita, and Riff perform a large amount of singing with varying styles. Only Tony and Maria are not dance-heavy roles and must perform the most operatic style of singing. The 1984 recording by Bernstein represents the only time that he personally conducted his score and was directly involved with the casting: ‘When I knew we were going to have a recording, I decided to go for sound. For the first time in my life, we can have exactly the singers we want.’⁸

The original Broadway cast recording features a group of then ‘unknown’⁹ performers with Larry Kert as Tony, Carol Lawrence as Maria, Chita Rivera as Anita, and Michael Callan as Riff. After many weeks of auditioning, Larry Kert, a bari-tenor, was cast as Tony. Kert apparently never intentionally auditioned for the role since the character was described as a ‘high tenor’. During the previews, producer Goddard Lieberson observed, ‘I hope Kert gets his first two songs into shape … ’¹⁰ As of opening night, Walter Kerr of the Herald Tribune observed, ‘When hero Larry Kert is stomping out the visionary insistence of “Something’s Coming” both music and tumultuous story are given their due.’¹¹ Obviously, Kert grew stronger with more runs of the show. It was Lieberson who encouraged the artistic team to make a cast recording, but CBS President William Paley strongly reacted to the vocal lines, ‘ … there’s nothing in it anybody could sing, too depressing, too many tritones, too many words in lyrics, too rangy – “Ma-ri-a” – nobody could sing notes like that, impossible.’¹² Perhaps that is what makes West Side Story remarkable; ‘anybody’ cannot sing it. It is a challenging work that requires sensitive casting and patient coaching.

These leading performers trained arduously to get the roles in their voices. Carol Lawrence spoke kindly of Bernstein’s style as a vocal coach: ‘None of us was an opera singer, and we knew it, yet we were singing opera. If Lenny saw that we were having difficulty with a passage in a song, he would say: “Tell me, how does that note feel in your mouth? If it doesn’t feel comfortable, I’ll change it.”’¹³ This approach gave the performers comfort and support in their roles, thus giving them the confidence to attain stellar performances. Chita Rivera remarked that Bernstein, ‘ … taught me how to hit those notes.’¹⁴ The role of Anita requires a strong belt, but also a flexible head–chest mix, specifically in the ‘Tonight’ (Quintet). Anita provides mezzo-soprano counterpoint to the soaring lines of Maria’s high soprano, which naturally carries Anita’s phrases into a higher range. In order to blend in this range with the operatic quality that Maria needs to produce for her notes, Anita cannot carry a belt into her E♭5 or F5 and has to allow for a more resonant space that is head voice dominant and perhaps vibrato in the tone in order to tune and blend with Maria. In the original Broadway cast recording, Chita Rivera sang most of this line down the octave and occasionally jumped to the written octave in a belt mix. In the 1961 movie adaptation, with most of the singing dubbed by ‘ghost singers’, the role of Anita in the ‘Tonight’ (Quintet) was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who also dubbed Maria, because the vocal line was too high for Betty Wand, who dubbed the rest of Anita.¹⁵ The 1984 opera recording added the Shark Girls towards the end of the ‘Tonight’ (Quintet) to create a full company number, singing the lines as written. For the 2009 Broadway revival, Karen Olivo also sang Anita in the original range, with some edits at the very end of the ensemble.

For the 1984 recording conducted by Bernstein with opera stars José Carreras, Kiri Te Kanawa, and Tatiana Troyanos, among others, the range of the vocal lines did not pose an issue. The major challenge for the operatic voices was dramatic interpretation. The rich instruments of Dame Te Kanawa and Carreras bring unfitting maturity to the young lovers Maria and Tony. Whereas the sound itself proves thrilling, the story seems distant and often disconnected to the music. Bernstein’s son, Alexander, and daughter, Jamie, convincingly portrayed Tony and Maria in the speaking scenes that precede the singing numbers. Yet the recording loses the sense of integration from their spoken word into the sung vocal lines of Carreras and Te Kanawa. Classical training rarely focuses on sung speech unless the role requires secco recitative. Even then, when opera singers are expected to declaim their text, they still must maintain spacious resonance for an easy transition into full singing. Also, the tone for classical voices most likely shifts into a dominant head voice earlier than musical theatre singers, who have a more dominant chest mix in the middle voice. This is most visible in Troyanos’s interpretation of Anita. Her velvety mezzo-soprano switches into a headier mix at C4 and D4, whereas Chita Rivera sang in a belt-mix style on those notes.

Likewise, most of these opera singers were schooled in bel canto technique, which generally trains the voice using consonant passages often in scalar motion and in sequence of half or whole steps. Bernstein’s writing for Tony and Maria often leans towards bel canto at its most operatic moments, such as in the beginning of the ‘Balcony Scene’. But when these singers are faced with wide intervallic leaps the continuity of tone quality seems more of a priority than acting the text. Vowels become modified to enhance the tone but decrease the understanding of the words. The consistent use of vibrato also obscures the communication of the text and occasionally misplaces stress on unstressed syllables. Whether sung by singers who primarily perform opera or musical theatre, the songs have a transportive and staying power.

‘The consummate craftsmanship of West Side Story with its matchless ability to weave a solemn narrative through music and dance, still dazzles after more than 50 years. Leonard Bernstein’s majestic score, in particular, is undiminished … fueled by testosterone and rage, and some of the most achingly beautiful expressions of love ever sung’, writes David Rooney of the 2009 Broadway revival.¹⁶ Directed by the then 91-year-old Arthur Laurents, this revival took risks to reimagine the story. Laurents strove for a more realistic interpretation than he felt was possible in the 1950s. For some critics, Laurents’s attempts at realism enhance the show, and for others it seemed more like a gimmick. One of the most dramatic changes to the show was provided by Lin-Manuel Miranda’s translations of lines and lyrics into Spanish for some of the Puerto Rican characters. Ideally, a bilingual performance gives the Sharks more presence, dignity, and ‘ … adjust[s] balance with the Jets, who always tended to dominate the proceedings’.¹⁷ It also creates more of a division between the two cultures, and the sound of the sung Spanish adds a very different dimension to the characters. Unfortunately, the use of Spanish did not go over well with the audience and the creative team restored much of the English later in the run.

Unlike in opera, there was no attempt to provide supertitles in this production, which fuelled some criticism because entire scenes would be performed in Spanish. For others, the use of Spanish added to the drama and overall experience. A powerful example of the use of both languages was heard in ‘A Boy Like That/Un Hombre Así’. The musical argument begins in Spanish as Anita chides Maria. However, at the midpoint of the duet, just prior to the musical shift into ‘I Have a Love’, Maria departs from her native Spanish and speaks the lyric, ‘You should know better!’ in English. This shift to English in this moment demonstrates her love for Tony, even at the cost of losing her own brother. After that, the duet continues in English. In a way, it signals that Anita accepts this love, which is understood when she sings with Maria at the consonant, harmonic end of this duet.

Karen Olivo’s performance of Anita drew critical acclaim, including the Tony Award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical. She was the first Broadway Anita to receive such an award. Vocally, she maintained exceptional power and nuance throughout her musical numbers. Also impressive was the portrayal of Maria by Josefina Scaglione, who was hailed for her operatic training and ease in the upper register. Tony’s portrayal by Matt Cavenaugh drew mixed reviews, noting the challenges of this role. Occasionally critics compared Cavenaugh to Kert’s performance, noting the vocal demands and dramatic challenges of portraying a convincing Tony. Although their voices were completely different, Cavenaugh a tenor, and Kert more of a baritone with a high extension, it seems likely that the critics found comparable interpretation styles.

Although some confessed that they resented the missing Sondheim text, the sound of the Spanish brought a new authenticity to the world of West Side Story. This revival added the voice that was missing in the original production, that voice of the marginalised and stereotyped Puerto Ricans, which was previously ignored and unheard. Likewise, the gender lines blurred in this production. Bernstein originally indicated that the song ‘Somewhere’ should be performed by ‘A Girl’. In the 2009 revival, the character of a young Jet named Kiddo, a young boy soprano (Nicholas Barasch) sings ‘Somewhere’. Critic Adam Feldman notes the significance of this adaptation for the twenty-first-century Broadway audience: ‘ … the show had to adapt, and Laurents has labored – within the constraints of what remains a faithful account of a 1950s musical – to disguise its traces of old-fashioned corn and bring its themes into hardened focus’.¹⁸

And the adaptations continued with the 2021 movie version, directed by Steven Spielberg with new dialogue by playwright Tony Kushner. This film reframes the story through a sociological lens that prioritises racial equity. Similar to the 2009 revival, many scenes were completely in Spanish without translations to amplify the Puerto Rican voice in the story and acknowledge ‘that America is not a monolingual country’.¹⁹ An important addition to the vocal landscape was including ‘La Borinqueña’, the Puerto Rican anthem, after the first gang altercation. Vocal coach and consultant for the film, Jeanine Tesori, collaborated with Puerto Rican dialect coach Victor Cruz to coach the actors on the transition from speaking into singing. Rachel Zegler integrated speech into song with ease as a stunning Maria. Cast when she was only 16 years old, she was the first Colombian to win a Golden Globe award for Best Actress. Tesori’s coaching manifests in these singers’ honest performances, taking them ‘inside out’ in their lyrical interpretation. She explains: ‘you’re singing, and you’re not singing, you’re actually working something out inside that we happen to (the audiences will) eavesdrop on … ’²⁰ Additionally, the benefits of audio engineering made it possible to capture live vocals on set. Although the majority of the numbers were prerecorded, ‘The balcony scene, the duet between Tony and Maria, was all done live. Rita Moreno singing “Somewhere”, that was all live. Ariana DeBose and Rachel Zegler doing “A Boy Like That” and “I Have a Love” live, when you watch that passion and power, belting at each other, it’s all real, all happening live on the set’, explains vocal producer Matt Sullivan.²¹ Occasionally, keys were lowered by a step (‘Something’s Coming’, ‘Maria’, ‘Balcony Scene’, and ‘I Feel Pretty’) and songs were reassigned (‘Cool’, ‘Somewhere’), but the integrity of the story remained. What was exemplary in this film was the seamless integration from spoken text into sung lyric, which resulted in a compelling reimagining of the 1957 musical.

When considering the vocal writing of West Side Story across more than sixty years of interpretation, the genius of the team of Bernstein, Robbins, Laurents, and Sondheim accounts for its longevity. The songs challenge the performers to throw themselves into the operatic passion, but also maintain a vocal technique that cultivates stamina and efficiency. Likewise, the genre of musical theatre continues to evolve and include extremely varied vocal styles. The combination of operatic and popular singing in one musical seems more common now than in 1957. Singers are expected to have the ability to ‘cross over’ from opera into musical theatre and vice versa. From the theatre to the opera house, to film, productions of West Side Story abound with vitality and relevance, and these voices will be heard for years to come.

For Jerome Robbins, musical theatre dance provided spectacle, but its primary function was to communicate story, acting as a cohesive thread between visual, aural, and textual elements. Robbins turned dance into a common language in the world of the play, an extension of a character’s vocabulary. For West Side Story, Jerome Robbins envisioned a prominent ensemble comprised of singing–acting dancers responsible for conveying essential narrative elements. By centering the action of the ensemble, movement and music lead lyrics, book, and design in translating given circumstances and character action. He enhanced aesthetic unity, thematic synthesis, and flow by developing a choreo-direction process which integrated American Stanislavski-based method acting principles with staging and dance composition. This ultimately contributed to the legacy left by West Side Story on film, Broadway, and in concert dance.

Setting the Stage for Choreo-Direction

Robbins’s custom of working with storyboards guided his approach to West Side Story ‘with the same time-free, space-free, image-evocative method of a ballet.’¹ Laurents’s short libretto, heavy in stage direction and exposition, allowed movement to lead storytelling. Working with Laurents’s descriptions of action (‘a boy being tripped up, or being sandbagged with a flour sack or even being spit on’), character traits (‘the boys … vital, restless, sardonic’), and dialogue (Anita: ‘You saw how they dance: like they have to get rid of something, quick’)² gave Robbins inspiration to thread both traditional dance and physical gesture through the narrative.

As a director, Robbins laced ‘all of the visual elements of the production – the moving human body, sets, and lights’ to create a cohesive aesthetic.³ He relied on the expertise of long-time collaborators in concert dance and Broadway: lighting designer Jean Rosenthal, scenic artist Oliver Smith, and costume designer Irene Sharaff. These collaborators knew ‘the kind of fluid, almost cinematic dance action’⁴ that created spatial clarity to support character-driven, movement-focused, non-verbal storytelling. Integrating design elements, Robbins used the raised levels and fences of the set for multi-level tableaus and jumps; allowed for lighting to enhance movement, mood, and fluidity between scene shifts; created patterns that featured the colours Sharaff assigned to each group (golds, greens, and brown for the Jets; purples, reds, and black for the Sharks); and devised character-driven gestures and choreography based on the cut of Sharaff’s costumes. As Priscilla Peña Ovalle notes, Robbins set ‘straight lines and short gestures for the Jet women,’ who were mostly dressed in pencil skirts and ‘supple, sweeping movements from Anita and the Shark women,’⁵ who were dressed in ruffled, full skirts. Intentionally enhancing design’s power of visual storytelling through his choreography and staging, non-textual elements provided clarity in defining relationships, character, and mood.

Arguably, it was Bernstein’s music that most inspired Robbins’s staging. Bernstein’s complicated, layered rhythms spoke to Robbins’s use of Stanislavskian beat changes as well as character action and emotion in his choreography. Throughout their careers, both artists sought projects that told ‘American’ stories to create an ‘American’ aesthetic in music and ballet. Bernstein and Robbins were both inspired by popular American rhythms – blues, jitterbug, mambo, and cha-cha – and accompanying dances. Robbins and his assistant Peter Gennaro, who primarily choreographed the Sharks, infused these African American and Latinx vernacular dances into movement vocabulary, including, as Julia Foulkes notes, ‘pounding heels, swirling skirts, and matador-like side bends with arms curving high above the head to convey ethnic particularities.’ She continues, the ‘elements alluded in a diffuse, generalized way to Spanish-speaking cultures.’⁶ Though Robbins and Gennaro employed mambo and other social dances as ways to establish character, time period, and relationship, the ‘genericness of “Latin” culture embedded in its music and choreography’⁷ was not specifically Puerto Rican in terms of cultural identity, but became defined as such when West Side Story went to film.

Robbins’s choreography and direction of the ensembles ‘forms the structure and language of the gangs … these characters dance their moods, intentions, and tragic ends.’⁸ Dance vocabulary works as emotionally motivated character movement, like the extended battement à la second with arms outstretched in an ‘L’ which is a move of longing or power. The iconic chassé could be translated as expansive, a confident, easy staking of land in the ‘Prologue,’ where in ‘Cool’ it is confined and low to the ground, like a coil compressed then released.

As choreo-director, Robbins could ‘demand unity both in the larger production, and within the individual performers.’⁹ Unlike shows that distinguish between the singing chorus and the dancers, Robbins’s West Side Story employed performers who could act, sing, and dance. These triple-threat performers were ‘quick-witted, reflexive, mercurial, versatile – not danseurs nobles or prima ballerinas but dancers, who could follow [Robbins’s] sketched gestures (he rarely used ballet terminology) and read his intentions from his merest glance.’¹⁰ Robbins prepared the dancing actors by offering ‘contextual research’ such as ‘postings of newspaper articles about Puerto Rico, juvenile delinquents, and general struggles in the city.’¹¹ He also employed non-traditional rehearsal practices like working with the Sharks and Jets separately to build competition and tension.

In creating the ensemble, Robbins required actors to develop backstories that would ‘convey the situation, mood, and meaning between people.’¹² He coached dancers to attack movement as their character would, asking them to give purpose to why they moved. The dancer invested, then, in distinct character choices, incorporating personal gestures and idiosyncrasies into their translation of the choreography. As Deborah Jowitt points out, Laurents’s descriptions in the libretto gave insight into characters: ‘A-Rab is “an explosive little ferret who enjoys everything and understands the seriousness of nothing,” Action, “a catlike ball of fury.”’¹³ Nuanced variations of shared movement vocabulary included manipulating the tension, dynamics, and exerted energy. A-Rab’s bursts of laughter made his choreographed movement seem more indirect and unpredictable. Action, on the other hand, bursts in a more direct, pouncing manner. As Keith Garebian writes, ‘Exactness or precise replication of a line or step was not as significant as youthful springiness, grace of carriage, strength in stopping and starting.’¹⁴ Unison choreography then symbolizes connectedness and power as a group, intentionally making it have greater impact.

With Robbins directing through dance, the Sharks and Jets ensembles become leads in the story. While Gennaro worked with the Sharks, Robbins focused on building the specificity of the Jets ensemble. The gangs’ collective physical distinctions helped to define them. These communities act as ‘both a destination for characters in a musical and an omnipresent environment for them.’¹⁵ Robbins’s choreo-direction establishes the love story of Tony and Maria in the context of their identities to the Jets and the Sharks, whose ‘restlessness and hostility,’ as Jowitt describes, ‘emerge primarily through rhythmic motion’ as they perform as gendered, ‘American,’ New York youth.¹⁶ By blending acting methods with narrative-driven dance composition through the use of dance-led numbers (which are almost void of text), character-led numbers (which have lyrics and dance breaks), and fights, transitions, and tableaus, Robbins stylistically unified the production.

Dance-Led Numbers

West Side Story opens with a snap – a physical gesture, signaling that dance and music will lead the storytelling. As Mary Jo Lodge points out, ‘shows that begin with a focus on dance … struggle less with embracing their later dance moments.’¹⁷ Numbers like the opening ‘Prologue’ and later ‘The Dance at the Gym’ and ‘Somewhere’ are staged in an open space, making dance central to storytelling, and feature signatures of Robbins’s style: pedestrian gestures that serve as deliberate stage business and lay foundations for dance vocabulary, movement that visualizes Bernstein’s complex rhythms, and clear stage patterns propelled by urgency and motivations stemming from characters’ anger, fear, and an assertion of turf.

In the ‘Prologue,’ the Jets establish themselves as an ‘ensemble comprised of idiosyncratic characters who maintain their individuation, even as – through shared movement, motive, and melody – they move as one.’¹⁸ When the curtain rises, they are mid-scene, leaning on Smith’s set. Their first snap is direct, impatient, attention-seeking, coded, and one of Robbins’s signature pedestrian gesture-turned-dance moves. It synthesizes the music and offers immediate subtext, as Ying Zhu and Daniel Belgrad point to the ‘muscular tension building beneath the surface, a tension that is revealed only when it is released as a sound … an apt physical synecdoche of coolness.’¹⁹ The snap leads to larger, gross motor movement akin to more familiar dance vocabulary where, as Jowitt describes ‘bravado, stealth, fear, playfulness, and anger meet in combat, revealed in actions that shrug their way into dance and as quickly drop back into everyday behavior.’²⁰ The repeating sweeping arm gesture and head pan indicate an assertion of power and relaxation for the Jets. They strut through New York streets, growing in confidence as the music swells until the abrupt entrance of Bernardo. The cut-off in the music and forward momentum of the movement establishes his antagonistic relationship with the Jets. Repeated cut-offs and crescendos align with the rise in tension of the movement – jumps and turns get tighter, pivots get more syncopated. The Sharks also snap to keep cool, but their phrasework is smoother and more vertical.

In the beginning sections, Robbins interjects gestures of feigned civility (a bow) between punctuated pushes (and lines like ‘Beat it’) to highlight rising tension between the Sharks and Jets as they establish space as territory. This culminates when a Jet is tripped by a Shark. The Shark shrugs on beat in a mocking apology. The Jet extends a hand which shifts from a handshake to a shove. Finally, the Shark’s ‘spit gesture’ sparks a music change that initiates a chase as both the Sharks and Jets begin to run. Robbins uses stark diagonals for entrances and exits as if groups are dodging through streets and alleyways, building on group patterns of 1-on-3 or 3-on-3 that occurred in the first part of the number. The Sharks and Jets move urgently, with punctuated exchanges that are executed with the ease of people who are familiar with the Upper West Side landscape, having fought there before. These opening sequences lay the groundwork for sonic and physical themes that are replayed through the show.

The ‘Dance at the Gym’ is another diegetic, dance-led number that opens mid-scene and further defines group identity and character relationships. In the open space of the community gymnasium, Robbins employs thematic movement vocabulary like the snap and the battement à la second, and redefines actions found in the ‘Prologue’ like meeting, waiting, and battle. Robbins’s choreography for the Jets and Gennaro’s for the Sharks emanate from specific vernacular dance styles; each team watch their ‘rival(s) dance and respond accordingly with movements that escalate in complexity.’²¹ With brass and percussion, the dynamic changes in music signal changes in the accompanying vernacular dances: blues, promenade, mambo, jive, and cha-cha.

Robbins’s unison ‘blues’ choreography, with explosive, ungendered, and initially touchless movement, establishes the space as a place to practice rituals of courtship and freedom, following the libretto’s description: ‘Jitterbugging wildly with their bodies but their faces, although they are enjoying themselves, remain cool, almost detached … The dancing is a physical and emotional release for these kids.’²² The couples then collapse into heteronormative pairings and move with their own character styles, circularly moving hips in a Mooche-like blues motion. Robbins stages Baby John and his partner in an awkwardly stiff variation, signaling his inexperience. This couple moved against the flow of the group, a trademark storytelling method he uses to ‘shake up the ensemble patterns.’²³

When community organizer Glad Hand initiates a ‘get-together dance,’ a way to urge participants to ‘become a community as a result of the dancing, rather than through a shared social or cultural heritage,’²⁴ the groups divide into two circles, boys on the outside, girls on the inside. As the ‘Promenade’ plays, the characters collectively walk upright, without hips or punctuation, to ‘Latin music as their parents might listen (or dance) to.’²⁵ When the music ends with Shark men facing Jet women, a silent beat of recognition of the outcome is broken when Bernardo gestures for Anita, cuing the mambo face-off.

The face-off features ‘Cuban mambo-style hip swings and layered rhythms for the Puerto Rican Sharks’ signature moves, and jitterbug athletic swings and turns for the Jets.’²⁶ Anita and Bernardo, representing the Sharks, set the tone with ‘arms held aloft and framing the face, chest high, in a pose reminiscent of flamenco,’ states Foulkes (see Figure 14.1). She continues: ‘the Jets respond with clucking heads and broad, gymnastic lunges to bluesy jazz,’²⁷ replicating movement qualities seen in the ‘Prologue,’ ‘Cool,’ and other Jets numbers. The groups form two, independent dance circles with featured dancers: Anita’s high kicks, layouts, and skirt movement versus Riff’s athletic gymnastics. Again, patterns and costuming define affiliation. As the dance-off escalates, ‘both gangs take on the characteristics of each others’ signature moves … with the Jets adopting “flamenco” arm positions and the Sharks taking on jitterbug.’²⁸ When Tony and Maria see each other, their look pauses the motion, shifting music and movement to ‘a streamlined cha-cha, which becomes “almost a minuet” … a blending of cultures.’²⁹ Tony and Maria’s duet is echoed by three additional couples performing a wordless flirtation through direct eye contact, circular port de bras, and delicate non-touches, all nods to romantic ballet pas de deux. The addition of finger snapping here is a flirtatious gesture. The light, uplifted qualities complement Bernstein’s ‘con grazia’ note on the score and provide contrast to the explosive, quick mambo.

Figure 14.1 Silvia Álvarez as Anita and Oriol Anglada as Bernardo in ‘The Dance at the Gym’ in SOM Produce’s production, Madrid, 2018.

(Photo by Javier Naval, in public domain.)

Robbins aligns Tony and Maria’s cha-cha in the gym with the staging and vocabulary of his fantasy ballet, ‘Somewhere,’ which is charged with Maria and Tony’s hopes for the utopic future. Staged after the Rumble and Bernardo’s death, ‘Somewhere’ features a principal pas de deux and corps de ballet relationship staged in front of ‘Smith’s airy, white and blue backdrop of sky and sea, with Manhattan in the distant background.’³⁰ Furthest from stylistic realism, Maria, Tony, and the ensemble, dressed in ‘soft pastel versions of what they have worn before,’ perform mostly unison balletic choreography with a presentational focus and male/female lifts, ‘movements which are not out of character but suddenly released from the tension of their realistic city problems.’³¹ Working from simple, replicated duets that echo Maria and Tony, the vocabulary emphasizes harmony as the ensemble locks hands, gazing peacefully toward that hopeful future.

Character-Led Numbers

Robbins integrated method acting and choreographic approaches to convey given circumstances, and defined specific movement qualities using character objectives. As Ray Miller states, Robbins ‘demanded not only high technical proficiency from the performers, but also a psychological understanding of character that would inform movement, voice, and musical choice.’³² He also used spatial patterns to convey characters’ hierarchy and power shifts within the gangs. For example, he often staged Bernardo and Riff at the center or front of their group and moved Tony to the periphery. Anita and Maria are similarly mirrored with the Shark women. Jet numbers like ‘Cool’ and ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ exemplify this character-led choreography, where movement is part of a scene and the choreography sacrifices pure spectacle to continue the thread of a scene’s intention.

For ‘Cool,’ the music and dance ‘represent(s) a visceral kinetic struggle between chaos and order, repression and expression.’³³ Described in Bernstein’s score as ‘solid and boppy,’ Robbins’s movements exude Robert Farris Thompson’s tenets of Africanist aesthetics of get down, swing, a sense of anticipation, and ephebism, which he describes as ‘youthfulness’; qualities of strength, flexibility, speed, and intensity in all parts of the body.³⁴ Finger snapping returns as a thematic gesture of cool and connection. Individual Jets burst from this state of cool with forceful reaches – they punch their fists in their palms, hit Bernstein’s unexpected sonic accents, and regain composure again. The coiled energy of the strings, muted horns, and guttural vocal gestures are enacted through contractions, tight turns, and low chassés. Arms and legs release outward and are drawn back quickly. The movement’s darting, flicking, and hitting qualities and constant syncopation and pauses in phrases, produces an unsteadiness, similar to the pulsing nature of Tony’s more pedestrian footwork in his earlier number ‘Something’s Coming.’

Robbins’s direction and choreography merges in eliciting actors to embody characters’ objectives (to block, to push, to suppress) as well as individual traits. For example, A-Rab’s sharp, sudden, reactionary movement quality throughout the scenes manifest in ‘Cool’ in his solo through repeated punches, gun-shaped hand gestures, and vocal ‘Pow!’ As Belgrad and Zhu point out, ‘over the course of the dance, A-Rab’s uncontrollable violent gesture will not be fully eliminated, but rather disciplined and integrated into the choreography,’³⁵ like in the crescendo of the dance break when the Jets finally find unison after individual bursts, or what Miller describes as an example of ‘a highly stylized, deeply resonating expression of the emotion behind that gesture … Robbins moves from a literal interpretation of gesture to a multi-layered movement phrase.’³⁶ The repetition of thematic gesture, therefore, acts as marker for a character’s physical ‘voice.’

The movement is a coded, physical language of youth, something not understood by adults, echoing Laurents’s use of slang in the libretto. In ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ exaggerated physical posturing seen in scenes with Krupke become the basis for the pantomime. The number is a satire following Riff through the life of a juvenile delinquent. Repeated gestures of violence like slapping and hitting with a newspaper emphasize the rhythmic staccato and frame of verse, chorus, break. Transitions between each mini-scene incorporate movement that mock adults who failed them – from an angular polka to a slap fight to drunken staggering. In one of West Side Story’s only comedic moments, Robbins ensures that physicality prioritizes the characters’ truthfulness, emotionality, and relationships.

From Stage to Screen

Most audiences know West Side Story as a film from 1961, which differs from the stage production in several ways in terms of staging and content. In the film, the camera impacted how movement could convey realism and metaphor; the cinematography emphasized the percussive cut-offs and tension. For example, in the ‘Prologue,’ Jowitt quotes Robbins saying, ‘when the walk began to build and hint at dance, “the camera WHIPS and we pick up the Jets in the new location.”’⁴¹ The camera also contributed to artful, emotionally resonant transitions, like the soft, dreamlike fade between the scene in the dress shop and the gym. Film could take choreography to larger spaces and real locations, which opened up possibilities for staging and patterns, as well as serve Robbins’s desire to create an authentic reality. For instance, the low ceilings of the parking garage ‘made us feel the weight of the world on our shoulders,’ dancer Robert Banas remembers. He continues, ‘We felt contained, cramped, restricted, and asphyxiated, which certainly mentally and physically enhance the choreography.’⁴² Additionally, the camera enhanced urgency and confrontation, like in ‘Cool’ when the dancers move toward the camera in their crouched position, as if chasing the camera and then pouncing.

Scene order and casting shifted to accommodate for cinematic storytelling. For instance, the ‘Prologue’ doubled in length and ‘Officer Krupke’ and ‘Cool’ were switched. Staging ‘Cool’ after the ‘Rumble’ gives the song to Ice, the new leader of the Jets, and the actors shifted their objectives to coping with the shock of and response to Riff’s death rather than preparing for battle. Another change included adding Shark men back to ‘America.’ For the stage, Robbins had ‘insisted that the song be for the girls only, as it was the only chance for a full-out all-female dance number.’⁴³ Primarily choreographed by Gennaro, the piece is a character-led number about Puerto Rican immigrants living in America, a mirror in a way to ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ for the Jets. However, as Brian Herrera notes, ‘instead of culminating in a single exuberant dance, the screen version of the number punctuates each rhymed quatrain of “in America”’⁴⁴ giving the number a feeling like it is an extension from the mambo footwork in the dance-off from ‘The Dance at the Gym.’ Adding back the men gives more power to the Shark males, and offers another kind of ‘battle,’ though dance breaks are seemingly disconnected from the narrative and instead accentuate the virtuosity of the female dancers. The number is driving, insistent, and indulging in musical theatre dance trends that feature virtuosic technical skills with constant turns, changing of direction, leaps, kicks, and layouts keeping with the tempo di seis and huapango rhythms.

Finally, the dream ballet ‘Somewhere’ was omitted from the film ‘because its otherworldliness could not fit the hyperrealism of the medium’⁴⁵ and because the leads were not dancers. Its omission, as Foulkes notes, ‘portended the steps away from West Side Story’s vision of hope,’ now only centering the better future for Tony and Maria, not the rest of the community. The absence of the dream ballet also solidified a previous divide between lead vocalists and ensemble dancers, given that audiences never see Tony and Maria dance other than in the cha-cha.

With Robbins’s reputation for being difficult and his inability to meet deadlines, he was released from the project, and director Robert Wise and choreographer Peter Gennaro took over piecing together Robbins’s motifs and visual aesthetic. For Robbins, his work as choreo-director would remain in the bodies and experiences of the performers executing character-based choices through movement.

‘West Side Story Suite’

West Side Story’s next evolution came in the form of concert dance with the ‘West Side Story Suite’ first in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway (1989), a dance-focused musical revue, then as a repertory piece for the New York City Ballet (NYCB) (1995). The ‘Suite’ distilled the production to its dance numbers: ‘Prologue,’ ‘The Dance at the Gym,’ ‘Cool,’ ‘America’ (restored to the Broadway version of just Shark women), ‘The Rumble,’ and ‘Somewhere.’ Robbins also added a new solo for Tony in ‘Something’s Coming.’ Visually, the original costume design, minimalistic set, and mood-enhancing lighting were maintained, keeping the period-style as well as the aesthetic connection between theatrical storytelling elements. The cast included Sharks and Jets ensembles, Maria, and Tony. Officer Krupke, a stand-in for all adults, became embodied in the sound of a police whistle.

The ‘Suite’ premiered in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway alongside other numbers from Robbins’s Broadway repertoire from 1944 to 1964.⁴⁶ It was an athletic feat for dancers who moved from number to number with no scenes between. The ‘Prologue’ opened in the same vein as the musical with a snap and a group of men. Numbers typically ended in a presentational front-facing and a unison bow of the head, like a concert dance piece. The dynamic connectedness between the movement and music featured prominently, and the growing tension over the course of the ‘Suite’ toward the ‘Rumble’ was rarely broken by text. Tony and Maria were left to tell their story via dance. Robert LaFosse, who is the ‘ideal Robbins dancer’ according to Time’s Martha Duffy, was cast as Tony, singing and dancing in the new ‘buoyant flying solo’ ‘Something’s Coming.’⁴⁷ For this new piece of choreography, Tony’s movement harkened to Robbins’s former solos from his earlier days with Ballet Theatre. With footwork that hits the score’s pulsing undercurrent, Tony’s upper body suspends the shapes with ease, allowing his voice to hold notes at the ends of lines. Bernstein said the piece would ‘give Tony balls – so that he doesn’t emerge as just a euphoric dreamer,’⁴⁸ and Robbins’s new choreography matches this characterization. Privileging acting above athletic jumps, Tony performs simple reaches and quick footwork; he executes pirouettes that sail, floating with anticipation, contrasting the tight turns in numbers like ‘Cool.’

The ‘Suite’ features a more equal balance of dancing for men and women. By incorporating ‘Somewhere’ and reverting back to the original staging for ‘America,’ there is more opportunity for women, especially Shark women, to establish themselves as integral parts of the story. Adding more women gives Maria a female community to either fit into or reside outside of, and ‘America’ offers virtuosic female dancing. The movement vocabulary highlights the female legs, hips, backs, and pounding footwork; however, it continues to remain unspecific in terms of conveying movement specific to Puerto Rican culture of the 1950s. However, by the 1990s, with salsa and Newyorican culture engrained in musical theatre and popular dance, the general Latinx dance style is even more accepted as an identity marker as well as an American movement style. The driving rhythm is persistent and their movement, next to ‘Cool,’ is the longest consecutive all-out dancing in the show.

By the time the ‘Suite’ premiered, Robbins’s choreography and style was recognized and studied by Broadway and ballet dancers, which was helpful in translating the choreography to new media. There were, however, significant differences between the ‘Suite’ performed in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and NYCB, most notably in terms of the dancers’s approach to choreography and use of space. For the revue on Broadway, the Imperial Theatre’s house seats 1,400 people, with less depth from the front of the stage to the back wall, which highlighted the compositional patterns made by the 38-person cast who dart in strong diagonals and quick pivots like they are in alleyways absorbed in the bustle of the city. The proximity of the stage to the audience made facial expressions and physical gestures easy to read by the audience. The main challenge facing the Broadway ‘Suite’ cast was not overdoing the performance and not giving into the larger, more trick-based exaggerations of the body and face. The dancers, well-trained as triple threats and jazz dancers, delivered more release and recovery than previous dancers, owing to the style of the popular studio technique of the 1980s and 1990s. Battements are higher, but still have control, isolations in contractions are more defined as shapes, and there is the sense that turns can go on forever if the music allowed. Vocal gestures, in lieu of most lyrics, weave into the language of the dance scene as much as any battement, pivot, or turn.

When the ‘Suite’ shifted to NYCB, there was doubt that ballet dancers could handle the demands of acting the choreography. It premiered in the New York State Theatre (now the David H. Koch Theatre), a deep, winged space where the stage is separated from the 2,500-seat audience by a visible orchestra. The expansive space highlights the form and shape of bodies as well as dynamic spatial patterns and use of compositional canons. The dancers worked expertly with Bernstein’s complex musical structures, grand crescendos, and moments of ease and subtlety, like in ‘Somewhere’ and the cha-cha at the ‘Dance at the Gym.’ However, the ballet dancers’ unfamiliarity with works that demanded they sing, speak, and dance led Robbins to bring in Broadway dancers (Robert LaFosse and Nancy Ticotin) to the NYCB performance to cover the roles of Tony and Anita. Like the film, translating West Side Story for the concert dance stage gave the piece longevity, a legacy captured and archived when it moved into the NYCB repertory, and was theirs alone from 1995 to 2007.

Revivals (1980, 2009) and Revisals for Stage (2019) and Film (2021)

Robbins directed and choreographed the West Side Story revival in 1980 with assistance from 1957 production veterans Tom Abbott and Lee Becker Theodore. The production remained true to the original and made some room for new dancers’ interpretations. After Robbins’s death, Arthur Laurents, in collaboration with Lin-Manuel Miranda, directed and revised a 2009 production. Revised to incorporate Spanish language for the Sharks, former Robbins dancer Joey McKneely was hired to reimagine the choreography with Robbins’s foundation. McKneely, who worked on Jerome Robbins’ Broadway and in staging and choreographing various tours of West Side Story, attempted to make the dance, as he put it, ‘the emotional glue.’⁴⁹ However, to update and foreground the text meant that the role of dance necessarily had to adjust. It also had to transfer to contemporary times and bodies. Some adjustments were slight, where McKneely felt the work needed, as Lisa Jo Sagolla writes, ‘alteration to retain the original choreography’s emotional impact,’ and other adjustments were music-bound. Sagolla continued, ‘jumps in the “Cool” number … needed extra time to extend their air position to the extreme point of its line.’⁵⁰ The same adjustments needed to be made for the battements, which were higher than those in the 1950s. Other adjustments factored in contemporary situations, like intensifying the fight choreography around Anita’s rape sequence.

In 2019, Ivo van Hove and Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker collaborated on a new West Side Story project. The piece is of a solidly European, postmodern aesthetic, full of multi-media elements and minimalist gestural abstraction. The goal of the production – deemed controversial for its dismantling of Robbins’s work, convening an all-white creative team, and its casting choices – was to modernize the story and dig into the identity politics of the characters. The production cut ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘Somewhere’ as well as other dance segments of the score and dialogue. De Keersmaeker’s movement vocabulary was in many ways opposing Robbins: ‘If Robbins’ dance floated up, De Keersmaeker’s shifts down and side to side.’⁵¹ However, in speaking with Sylviane Gold, de Keersmaeker said she was interested in ‘the way the Robbins dances evolve out of casual, everyday moves … There’s something about simplicity and readability in Jerome Robbins’s movement that is extremely efficient.’⁵² She, like Robbins, went to clubs to watch young people dance, so as to situate the movement in the contemporary period, giving authentic period style to the choreography. Inspired by music of the day’s youth, she also looked at hip hop, break dance, martial arts, and contemporary vernacular dance forms, bringing former Miami City Ballet principal Patricia Delgado and Tony-winning choreographer Sergio Trujillo on as consultants. Like Robbins, she worked with dancers to establish the needs of the story and the truth of the characters.

In 2021, West Side Story returned to the screen with director Steven Spielberg at the helm and a heavy book revision by Tony Kushner. The Oscar-nominated film featured choreography by NYCB resident choreographer and artistic advisor Justin Peck. A descendant of Balanchine and Robbins’s influences, Peck is known for collaborating with an eclectic array of musicians, reimagining classic stories, and building strong ensemble work. His collaborations have led him to his Tony-Award winning choreography for the Broadway revival of Carousel (2018), as well as dance for camera and feature film projects. He is intimately familiar with Robbins’s work at NYCB, having performed in the ‘West Side Story Suite.’ For this film, he paid homage to Robbins while pursuing his own choreographic aesthetics that supported a contemporary approach to the story.

Similar to Robbins’s approach, Peck used dance to convey character tensions, the power of group identity, and the reactions to the changing community landscape of the Upper West Side. Dance is employed to emphasize the complexity of emotions that cannot be expressed through lyric or book. He also brought in his wife Patricia Delgado and Craig Salstein, a former soloist at American Ballet Theater, to assist in choreographing the Shark sequences, as Robbins did with Peter Gennaro. Peck wove visible references to Robbins (and Gennaro) throughout in the film: chassés as Jets accumulate as an identified gang in the ‘Prologue’; snapping used to direct attention and keep time; outstretched arms as groups rush into a rumble; and the ‘Mambo!’ face-off staging, use of blues and swing social dance motifs, rhythmic footwork for the Sharks choreography, and the box step with arms outstretched in a snap for the cha-cha-cha in the ‘Dance at the Gym.’

Peck’s choreography was clearly customized to suit the cinematography (instead of the cinematography being customized to suit the choreography). This can be seen in the ‘Prologue’ which focuses on setting up the world of the Upper West side where Peck’s choreography is only occasionally given focus to highlight the individual groups’ identities. The Jets stake their territory by hitting strong, clear shapes as they accumulate in number and are interrupted by their main obstacles (the Sharks or other Puerto Rican residents in the neighborhood, building demolition and construction sites, or interactions with cops). Dance evolves into realistic running or fighting, which is staged without syncing with the score’s detailed rhythms.

The ‘Dance at the Gym’ sequence highlights the talents of the dancing cast, especially the women led by Tony-Award winner Ariana DeBose as Anita and Paloma Garcia-Lee as Graziella. Peck’s choreography is driving and athletic, featuring quick footwork and a fusion of ballet, mambo, swing, and jazz-inspired partnering. His compositional patterns and Spielberg’s camera angles emphasize Broadway designer Paul Tazewell’s costumes which pay homage to the original designs of women’s skirts and the vibrant colours that signal gang affiliation. Like the ‘Prologue’ the dance is interrupted by conflict and scene vignettes. Unlike in the original film, some characters who are important catalysts in the story get a feature. Anybodys is briefly featured dancing with the Jets, and is shown rejected when the movement transitions to heteronormative social partnering, emphasizing Anybodys’s inability to ‘fit’ in this world. Similarly, Chino, an accountant/square who is Bernardo’s chosen date for Maria, is given a solo moment to initiate a dance that, when Bernardo and Anita join, gets adopted by both Sharks and Jets.

‘America’ is staged as in the original film, with Shark men and women in playful battle. However, instead of framing the piece in one location, the piece roams through the neighborhood streets, stopping in the boxing gym and threading through resident protesters and market vendors with no clear destination. This number employs dance to provide spectacle, featuring DeBose and David Alvarez (Bernardo) in a visual back-and-forth argument that emulates the lyrics. Men and women dance with their gender separately at first, then eventually move to full-touch partnering, demonstrating their reconciliation. The number culminates with the Sharks dancing in the middle of an intersection, clogging traffic and being witnessed by white and Puerto Rican onlookers. There is a brief addition of children to the choreography. The new incorporation of the community members as witnesses who don’t get to participate in the dancing (with the exception of a brief incorporation of children at the end) or even seem to support it indicates that the Sharks are outcasts like the Jets.

‘Cool’ is transformed again, now taking place between ‘One Hand, One Heart’ and ‘Tonight’ (Quintet) in the story. The number, no longer about the Jets working through a collective anguish, is a duet between Tony and Riff that demonstrates the divide between Tony and the Jets and a premonition of the coming violence. Symbolically shot on mid-demolition structures, the staging, which contradicts Tony telling Riff to keep cool, creates a keep-away fight for the possession of a gun. These actions antagonize Riff, and Peck’s signature tight core turns accented by rhythmic footwork or quick and distal dabs and flails remain central as the duo leap over broken floorboards and swing on dislocated pipes. Tony and Riff are mostly at odds, circling, chasing, or pushing against one another, with occasionally unison phrases, until their ‘dance’ becomes actual fight choreography. A five-on-one keep-away adding other Jets to Riff’s side culminates with the lyric ‘Pow!’, now identified with the literal gesture of a gun-shaped hand aimed at Tony.

In the original, the music and dance were carefully entwined; in this film, the choreography appears to ride alongside Bernstein’s score as opposed to with it. ‘I Feel Pretty’ and ‘Gee, Officer Krupke,’ which would be opportunities for more dance, are staged to enhance set pieces or camera movement. The main shifts that privilege book over music or movement also shift the film’s delivery: nonverbal storytelling is diminished to privilege more dialogue used to flesh out the backstory for the lead male characters (Tony is just out of prison, Bernardo is a boxer) and introduce the new character of Doc’s widow, Valentina, played by Rita Moreno. Interrupting the ‘Dance at the Gym’ with audible lines when Sharks and Jets clash, when Glad Hand and Krupke interject, or when Tony enters relegates dance and music to the background. Giving Valentina ‘Somewhere’ to sing solo and stationary strips the movement from a song meant for a dream ballet.

Ultimately, dance serves the film’s cinematography and direction. Because Peck’s vocabulary (or the way it is shot) lacks release or fluidity, it misses some of the complexity and nuances of Bernstein’s score that Robbins was so apt to synthesize. Instead, dance sequences for Sharks and Jets keep a consistent tempo and aesthetic no matter the musical structure or rhythm – tight, crisp, sharp. Contrasting fluidity is only reserved for Tony and Maria. As the film, like the 2019 musical, reimagines and attempts to update the story, it also ventures away from core elements of the project that made it so unique in its own time.

The Legacy

West Side Story’s lasting impact on musical theatre dance and concert dance can be seen in dance-led, integrative productions; in choreography and movement direction that honors character and circumstance over spectacle; and in triple threat performers. As Lodge writes, ‘the era of the triple threat performer not only led to changes in who danced, but in fact, since dance could be interspersed throughout the production, in how dance could be used.’⁵³ West Side Story was the first large-scale Broadway project for a choreo-director which empowered Robbins to thread all production elements seamlessly to serve the story and create movement vocabulary that fits the needs of the character and scene. Robbins activates the ensemble, not just as background or spectacle, but as a key force that drives narrative forward with clear characters and intention. Through its film, revivals, and tours, West Side Story was seen by audiences around the world, solidifying its iconic status, setting it up for numerous references, satires, and quotations in popular culture, from Gap commercials (2000) to The Simpsons (2011) to Glee (2011). With this wide audienceship came more glaring issues of generalizing Latinx culture in Robbins’s and Gennaro’s choreography and with Bernstein’s music, which ‘spurred long-standing cultural debates interrogating the musical’s particular contributions to the limiting repertoire of Latina/o depictions in US popular performance.’⁵⁴ Though popular ethnic dance forms were part of musical theatre dance training and performance of the time, this translation of ‘Americanness’ often lacked the specificity necessary in understanding Puerto Rican identity for West Side Story.

West Side Story demonstrated that audiences are collaborators who are capable of engaging with a musical that does not shy away from rape, violence, and racism. Where dance had previously translated the inner psyche and subtext that text could not, Jerome Robbins used his talents as a choreographer as well as a director to stage scenes and dance that conveyed fear, angst, hate, and deep inner turmoil through realistic gesture. As the dance work was archived and copyrighted in film and ballet repertory, it accumulated staying power because, like the text and music, West Side Story is forever captured and referenced in our history of American art.

On 28 February 1968, a production of West Side Story opened at the Vienna Volksoper, the second most important opera theatre in the Austrian capital after the Vienna State Opera. One of the main reasons for the Volksoper’s decision to stage West Side Story was that Leonard Bernstein was working in Vienna with increasing frequency. Bernstein made his debut at the Vienna State Opera in 1966 with Verdi’s Falstaff, and he returned in 1968 for a production of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier. Already in 1956, moreover, the Vienna Volksoper produced Bernstein’s musical Wonderful Town. The Volksoper’s West Side Story was in fact promoted as an early celebration of Bernstein’s fiftieth birthday. The staging of Bernstein’s work contributed to the rise of the Austrian metropolis as a European centre of American musical theatre. As this chapter shows, the main link between Bernstein, Broadway, and Vienna was Marcel Prawy (1911–2003), a well-known Austrian dramaturg, opera connoisseur, and critic. Prawy was also one of the first European producers of American musicals. In his 1996 memoir, Prawy claimed that in his pioneering productions of American musicals on European stages, he aimed to enlarge the operatic repertoire:

This approach is also apparent in Prawy’s adaptation of West Side Story, which imputes Central European cultural viewpoints and preferences into the American artform, particularly in its representation of ethnic conflicts.

Marcel Prawy was born in 1911 as Marcell Ritter Frydman von Prawy into a prominent Viennese Jewish family. During his studies of law at the University of Vienna, he also attended Egon Wellesz’s musicological lectures and became an opera enthusiast. After finishing his law degree in 1936, Prawy became an assistant to the Italian pro-Fascist film director and screenwriter Carmine Gallone. During the work on Gallone’s 1936 film Opernring (English title: Thank You, Madame) in Vienna, Prawy became acquainted with Polish opera singer and film star Jan Kiepura, and soon became the secretary to Kiepura and his wife, Hungarian actress and soprano Marta Eggerth. Thanks to Kiepura and Eggerth, Prawy was able to emigrate to the United States after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938. His employers soon became involved with Broadway, most prominently in the 1943 production of Lehár’s The Merry Widow at the Majestic Theater, and Prawy got to meet leading personalities of the American musical theatre, such as Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and Jerome Kern. Prawy was fascinated by the differences between European opera and American musicals:

Prawy eventually obtained American citizenship and enlisted in the US army, but returned to Vienna after the end of World War II. Back in Austria, he made use of his knowledge of American musical theatre when he organized a series of theatrical evenings in Vienna’s Kosmos-Kino (later also ‘cosmos theatre’), where he introduced and explained excerpts from American musicals to Austrian audiences. In 1955, Prawy became the chief dramaturg at the Vienna Volksoper (under the director Ernst Marboe) and in that position, he introduced American shows to a musical public until then solely devoted to operas and operettas. Prawy himself claimed that his were the first productions of musicals on the European continent.³ Yet, already in 1948, Czech actors Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich, who, similar to Prawy, spent World War II in the USA, introduced Prague audiences to Finian’s Rainbow, though with a radically revised plot.⁴ Prawy’s first American import was Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate!, which was enormously successful after its Volksoper premiere on 14 February 1956. The next American musicals at the Volksoper were Bernstein’s Wonderful Town in 1956 and Annie Get Your Gun! in 1957, which nevertheless did not achieve the same success as Kiss Me, Kate! Due to the misfortunes of the two shows, the protests against introducing musicals in the ‘city of operettas and waltzes,’ and also the death of Prawy’s supporter and the Volksoper director Marboe, the Volksoper returned to American works only in the mid 1960s. First, in 1965, Prawy produced Porgy and Bess, followed by West Side Story in 1968. Prawy’s final two musical productions at the Volksoper were Show Boat in 1971 and Carousel in 1972. His musical-related activities ended in 1972, when he was hired by the Vienna State Opera to work on programming and public outreach and education.

Prawy became an admirer of Leonard Bernstein’s music at a time when Bernstein was mostly unknown as a composer in Europe. Prawy and Bernstein first became acquainted when Prawy was preparing the 1956 production of Wonderful Town, which was the first Bernstein stage work to be performed in Europe. In 1957, Prawy attended the Broadway premiere of West Side Story. According to his biographer Otto Schwarz, Prawy wanted to bring West Side Story to Vienna soon after the American premiere but had lost his influence in Volksoper after the death of director Marboe in 1957.⁵ Prawy continued to keep in touch with Bernstein, and in 1965, he approached Bernstein with the offer to conduct the Volksoper production of Porgy and Bess. At that time, however, Bernstein was already engaged to conduct Lucchino Visconti’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff at the Vienna State Opera. Prawy’s interest in West Side Story was reignited in February 1964, when the Finnish troupe from the Tampere Theatre gave four guest performances of a 1963 Finnish adaptation of Bernstein’s musical at the Theater an der Wien.⁶ Prawy thought West Side Story was ‘the masterwork of masterworks’ (‘Meisterwerk aller Meisterwerke’) and eventually approached Bernstein about producing the work in Vienna.⁷ Bernstein’s only condition supposedly was that ‘Tony and Maria …must sing like Rudolfo [sic] and Mimi in “La Bohème!”’⁸ Prawy also claims that he decided to produce West Side Story at the Volksoper in 1968 to celebrate Bernstein’s fiftieth birthday.⁹ For that year, Bernstein was also engaged by the Vienna State Opera to conduct a new production of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier, so he was to be in Austria and experience the performances of his own musical.

In preparing the Volksoper West Side Story, Prawy returned to his practice, applied already in Kiss Me, Kate!, Wonderful Town, and the Kosmos-Kino shows, of translating works of American musical theatre into German. Prawy must have started the West Side Story translation already in the summer of 1966, because he claims he was working on it during his summer stay on the Canary Islands.¹⁰ Once finished, Prawy’s German translation pleased Bernstein, who supposedly told Prawy that West Side Story was better in German than in English.¹¹ Prawy’s claim contrasts with many contemporaneous critiques that suggested that the German version was not as harsh-sounding as the English version, which made the work seem more sentimental.¹² As with most foreign-language adaptations of stage works, Prawy’s West Side Story differed in significant details from the original text by Arthur Laurents and Stephen Sondheim. In Prawy’s own estimate, the adaptation’s lyrics kept only about 40 percent of the original meaning because, according to Prawy, Americans think and speak too quickly and the American language is therefore untranslatable.¹³ The differences between Prawy’s German adaptation and the English original also suggest that Prawy was concerned about making the American work more understandable for Viennese audiences not only through his approach to language and the poetic properties of the lyrics, but also by subtle but significant changes in the work’s meaning. Most prominently, Prawy aimed at increasing the Broadway work’s exoticist elements.

As earlier critics and researchers have pointed out, both the original 1957 musical and the 1961 film combine negative stereotypes with sympathetic agency in how they depict West Side Story’s two ethnic groups, the American-born characters, represented by the Jets, Doc, and the policemen, and the Puerto Rican characters, represented by the Sharks and their girls. Ralph Locke explains, for example, that West Side Story has many hallmarks of earlier exoticist operas and operettas: the exotic group, the Puerto Ricans, are presented as the Other and are effeminized, the Polish-American Tony is portrayed as ‘the courageous yet sensitive Self,’ and, similar to many earlier Western or proto-Western opera heroes, is depicted as he ‘intrudes, at some peril, into a forbidden, darker-skinned region, which is represented by the tender and beautiful Maria, the exotic Other, the Desired One.’¹⁴ At the same time, Locke continues, few earlier exotic works ‘focus as unremittingly on the search for a place of reconciliation as West Side Story does … the death of exoticism – the show finally suggests – may permit the birth of a multiracial, multiethnic, mutually tolerant society.’¹⁵ In discussing the ‘Dance at the Gym,’ Locke also suggests that there is something specifically American about West Side Story’s mixture of exoticist and de-exoticizing elements: the fact that both ethnic groups participate and delight in the Mambo, a Latin dance, and the fact that through the enjoyment of the music the audience is ‘drawn into caring’ about the on-stage characters, parallel the processes in which white America often resents ‘the intrusion of darker-skinned populations into its protected domains, but, on the cultural level, it absorbs elements of the Outsider, quickly domesticates and masters them.’¹⁶ Bernstein’s Puerto Ricans, in other words, are both a source of alienation and absorption; they are presented in a way that not only stresses ethnic differences but also makes the mainstream white audience sympathize with them.

A significant aspect of Prawy’s attempt to translate the Broadway show for Central European audiences is that the Viennese adaptation to some extent abandons West Side Story’s original ambiguity of representing the Other. To clearly bring out the ethnic differences in his German-language adaptation, Prawy decided to cast the American-born characters with native German speakers and the Puerto Rican characters with non-German performers, hired outside of German-speaking lands after hundreds of auditions in New York and Madrid. To be sure, the original Broadway production of West Side Story also aimed at an ethnic authenticity by casting some of the Puerto Ricans with Latin-American actors – this was the case especially with Chita Rivera in the role of Anita, who had Puerto Rican ancestry. At the same time, other performers in the Puerto Rican roles on Broadway were of European descent – this was the case with the original Maria, Carol Lawrence. Prawy’s approach to casting and how it was perceived in the contemporary press, however, leaned even more toward racial stereotyping. Most of the reviews of the 1968 production hail Prawy’s distinction between the two ethnic groups as the most remarkable achievement, which makes it seem as if the general perception of the musical in 1968 centered on how it depicted ethnic difference, not common humanity. The ethnicity of the Volksoper cast and particularly of the Puerto Rican impersonators became a source of immense fascination for Austrian and German critics and called forth animalistic and sexual imagery. These critics, moreover, tended to further exoticize the American performers, sometimes referring to all of them as ‘coloured’ (‘farbig’).¹⁷ Particularly fascinating and exotic to many critics was the Italian-American Carmine Terra in the role of Bernardo. The Viennese journal Wochenpresse described him as ‘interestingly exotic’ (‘interessant-exotisch’), and the reviewer for the journal Wiener Zeitung referred to him as ‘a nimble, ready-to-jump beast of prey’ (‘feinnerviges, sprungbereites Raubtier’).¹⁸ The critics found Arline Woods, the Volksoper Anita, similarly fascinating and exotic; Der Merker called her ‘a sexually charged temperament bomb’ (‘sexladene Temperamentsbombe’).¹⁹ The critic for the Swiss journal Tages-Anzeiger likewise rates the racial aspect of the Volksoper production as significant when he writes that he was initially skeptical about the show, expecting a musical turned into an operetta (‘ein Musical à la viennoise’) and wondering whether the songs were already too well known and outdated, especially because of the popularity of the film and the recordings of the English version. But the German production was eventually a pleasant surprise for the critic, particularly because the racial difference was brought out so effectively through the actors’ accents.²⁰

Prawy’s German translation contributes in several details to the sharper ethnic differentiation of the two groups portrayed in the musical. For the most part, Prawy’s text is sensitive to both the poetic meanings and the rhymes and rhythms of Stephen Sondheim’s original lyrics. This can be seen already in the very first stanza of the opening ‘Jet Song’:

To create a close rhythmic connection between the original text and the German translation, Prawy often departs from the original meaning. These phrases at times make the Jets more outspoken about their racist attitudes. In the opening of the first-act quintet ‘Tonight’ (‘Heut Nacht’), for example, Prawy sharpens the phrases with which the Jets refer to the Sharks. Prawy changes the Jets’ line ‘The Puerto Ricans grumble “fair fight”’ to ‘Die Kokosfresser heulen: “Zweikampf”’ (‘The coconut eaters howl: “combat”’) and the line ‘We’re gonna cut ’em down to size/Tonight’ to ‘Das Pack von Wilden wird heut klein – ganz klein’ (‘The pack of the wilds will be diminished today’). Another change that intensifies the Jets’ racist views comes in Action’s quatrain from ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’:

The heightened racism of Prawy’s portrayal of the Jets intensifies the differences between the white characters and the Puerto Ricans. It is easy to imagine that the sharpened representation of racial conflict in the Volksoper West Side Story may have resonated with the experiences of Prawy and other members of the Viennese Jewish community. In his memoir, for example, Prawy remembers with revulsion that the representation of the Black jazz band fiddler Jonny in the Vienna State Opera 1927 production of Ernst Krenek’s Jonny spielt auf caused week-long demonstrations with placards that reviled Blacks and Jews.²¹ Gertrud Marboe, the wife of Ernst Marboe, the Volksoper director who helped Prawy produce Kiss Me, Kate in 1956, wrote, furthermore, that some members of the Viennese musical establishment opposed the introduction of musicals at the Volksoper with ‘a certain anti-Semitism’ (‘einem gewissen Antisemitismus’).²² By making the Jets more explicitly racist, Prawy may have been making the Puerto Ricans more sympathetic to those who had experienced racial oppression, possibly because he himself, as a Jew in Vienna, may have to some extent identified with the Puerto Ricans.

The emphasis on ethnic difference in the Viennese adaptation is quite audible in the cast recording of the 1968 production, released by the CBS prior to the Volksoper premiere.²³ In the original Broadway recording from 1957, the Puerto Rican characters clearly deliver their songs with a Hispanic accent, but overall it is not difficult to recognize that most of them are native English speakers. In the Austrian recording, by contrast, not only do the performers have a foreign accent but they also put on a much more pronounced Hispanic accent, although many of them were not native Spanish speakers. These differences become particularly obvious in the most famous Puerto Rican number of West Side Story, the song ‘America.’ In the Broadway recording, Chita Rivera as Anita attempts to make the song’s second stanza sound Hispanic but her American accent shines through. The Viennese Anita, Arline Woods, by contrast, sings in a more pronounced mixture of foreign accents, so that her phrases are nearly incomprehensible. In comparison to the Broadway Rosalia and Anita, furthermore, the Viennese performers sing in voices that are breathier, filled with more pronounced changes in timbre and vibrato, fluctuating tempo, and improvised sound effects.

A similar transformation occurs with the Viennese Maria. For the Volksoper production, Prawy hired Julia Migenes, a native New Yorker of Greek and Irish-Puerto Rican descent. As the New York Times noted in a 1981 interview, despite her appearance, Migenes spoke with a pronounced New York accent.²⁴ In the Viennese recording, Migenes nevertheless puts on a faux-Hispanic accent that was much stronger than that of Carol Lawrence, the original Broadway Maria. This becomes quite obvious from the Broadway and Vienna recordings of ‘I Feel Pretty.’ Migenes’s appearance and her vocal delivery of the role made a strong impression on the Viennese audiences and critics, most of whom perceived her as a Puerto Rican, not an American singer. Even after her Vienna debut in West Side Story, Migenes cultivated an exotic image for her European fans. In 1980, for example, she produced an LP entitled Latin Lady.²⁵ She also appeared in a number of exotic roles in Europe, including as Carmen in Francesco Rosi’s 1984 film version of Bizet’s opera, where she starred next to Plácido Domingo. In the years following her Viennese appearance in West Side Story, the Austrian press treated Migenes as a fascinating, exotic Other. In 1970, for example, the tabloid Bunte Österreich Illustrierte featured Migenes in a story titled ‘Der Vorhang fällt, die Liebe bleibt’ (‘The Curtain Falls, the Love Remains’), which reports on her romantic relationship with Heinz Marecek, one of the Volksoper Jets.²⁶ The story concludes with an endearing, yet clearly exoticizing episode, in which Marecek nearly broke up with Migenes when he realized she had a quite significant weakness: she could not learn how to make Viennese Palatschinken, crêpe-like pancakes served with jam. To avoid destroying her relationship to the good-looking Austrian, the article adds, Migenes gave up pursuing Palatschinken recipes altogether. The myth of Migenes’s exotic, Caribbean origin remained so strong in Austria that it is still presented as a fact in a 2012 PhD dissertation about Broadway musicals in Austria written at the University of Vienna, where Migenes is presented as born in Puerto Rico.²⁷

Besides the vocal delivery, it is also once again Prawy’s German translation that transforms Maria’s image in the Volksoper production. Stephen Sondheim’s original lyrics of ‘I Feel Pretty’ show Maria as joyfully playful yet also able to assess her emotions with a tongue-in-cheek attitude:

Prawy’s translation is somewhat awkward and therefore presents a more simplistic and naïve image of Maria:

Whereas Sondheim’s Maria reflects on her emotions and to some extent makes fun of them as well, Prawy’s Maria is simply describing her basic qualities. The Viennese Maria’s ingenuousness is enhanced in the 1968 recording, where ‘I Feel Pretty’ proceeds in a slower tempo than in the original 1957 recording. As a result, the Viennese rendition of ‘I Feel Pretty’ becomes more sentimental and artless, similar to utterances from earlier Viennese operetta characters who were socially inferior, such as the introductory song ‘Ich bin die Christel von der Post’ (‘I Am Christel, the Post Mistress’) for the main non-noble heroine of Friedrich Zeller’s 1857 classic Der Vogelhändler (‘The Bird Seller’). Another famous operetta aria with which Viennese audience members may have associated the Austrian Maria’s ‘Weil ich nett bin’ is Chinese Princess Mi’s ‘Im Salon zur blauen Pagode’ (‘In the Salon of the Blue Pagoda’) from Lehár’s 1929 Das Land des Lächeln (‘The Land of Smiles’). At the same time, Mi’s aria is in some ways more complex than Maria’s because the easily exotic music (based on simple, repetitive, pentatonic tunes) clashes with her tongue-in-cheek lyrics that criticize the treatment of women in traditional Manchu society.

The exoticizing approach to Maria in the Volksoper West Side Story, was balanced by the Viennese approach to Tony. Whereas Maria became a more clearly exotic Other, Tony is easily identifiable as a Viennese hero. The particulars of the Viennese Tony are most closely related to the approach and skills of Tony’s Volksoper impersonator, Adolf Dallapozza. Whereas Migenes got her first stage experiences on Broadway, Dallapozza was an Austrian-born operatic singer and a member of the Volksoper ensemble at the time of the West Side Story production. For the Volksoper audience, he was therefore a familiar figure, unlike Migenes, a newly arrived foreigner. In the 1968 recording, moreover, Dallapozza stands out because of the operatic quality of his voice and the Viennese accent with which he pronounces Prawy’s German text. This is particularly obvious from a comparison of the 1957 and 1968 recordings of Tony’s ‘Something’s Coming.’ What in the 1957 recording sounds typically ‘Broadway-like’ transforms in the 1968 recording into an operetta cavatina, a style with which the Viennese audiences could easily identify. Bernstein himself picked up on Dallapozza’s qualities of a good Austrian/European/white boy when he cast him as the simple-minded and good-natured Jaquino in his production of Beethoven’s Fidelio, created with the Vienna State Opera team at the Theater an der Wien to celebrate Beethoven’s bicentennial in 1970.

The intensity of ethnic characterization in the Volksoper West Side Story seems to have influenced many Austrian critics, who viewed racial conflict as the defining issue of the work. For the critic of the Vienna journal Neue Front, Prawy’s adaptation, although it was not in the original language, managed to present a genuine vision of how America, the American temperament and joie de vivre, are ‘overshadowed by wildness, brutality, racial hatred, and unruly youth.’²⁸ The reviewer for the Salzburger Volkblatt was critical of the work’s overall premise, because the story of Romeo and Juliet was overwhelmed, optically and acoustically, by racial questions and gang violence.²⁹ The reviewer also imagines many audience members objecting that what was depicted on the stage in the Volksoper West Side Story ‘is not our world, not our idea of art’ (‘dies ist nicht unsere Welt, nicht unsere Vorstellung von Kunst’). The critic fears that the Austrian youth might try to imitate what they see on the stage. In other words, the Salzburger Volksblatt critique suggests that to some commentators the Volksoper production completely suppressed the humanistic elements of West Side Story; where Bernstein’s work to some extent promotes multicultural understanding, some Volksoper audience members only saw racial violence and hate. The strong differentiation between the Jets and the Sharks in the Volksoper production might have also been the reason why Bernstein himself thought, as reported in several German reviews, that West Side Story was ideologically outdated by 1968. The Zürcher Spiegel critic, for example, explains why he perceived the Volksoper performance as too sentimental and at times dull:³⁰

German critics were also quite opinionated about Bernstein’s music and their criticism is also based on exoticist and racialized viewpoints. Bernstein’s score became an object of exotic admiration mainly because it contains references both to North American and Latin American musical idioms. Most critics found particularly appealing those portions of Bernstein’s score that were most unlike traditional European classical music, whereas they strongly objected to the lyrical, expressive, and most opera- and operetta-like selections. As the reviewer for the Graz journal Südost-Tagepost put it: the dance-like and rhythmic sections are very effective, but the lyrical ones are quite banal (‘alles Tänzerisch-Rhythmische ist sehr wirksam, alles Lyrische eher banal’).³¹ The critic for the journal Wiener Montag was more explicit about the exoticist bent of his musical preferences when he wrote that lyrical numbers such as ‘Maria’ are inexcusable, but Bernstein’s music is redeemed by his reliance on ‘Mittel-, Latein- und Color-Amerika [middle, Latin, and coloured America].’³² Numerous reviewers went as far as to reject the lyrical numbers of West Side Story as ‘kitschy.’ The critic for Der Merker, for example, claimed that some numbers, such as ‘Maria,’ are so kitschy as to exceed the bearable level of Viennese operettas.³³

At the same time, the Volkoper West Side Story came to be viewed as reflecting specifically Viennese qualities, particularly by German critics outside of Austria. Especially interesting reactions come from reviewers in Switzerland, where the Volksoper toured with West Side Story in 1970. The Zürcher Zeitung, for example, pointed out that Dallapozza brought numerous ‘Viennese moments’ to the performance of Tony.³⁴ The Zürcher Spiegel was more critical, claiming that the Volksoper production included too many satirical slips into the manners of German-Austrian musical comedy, particularly in the ‘cheap’ ‘Tonight’ (Quintet) and in ‘Gee, Officer Krupke.’³⁵ The critic also thought that Dallapozza’s presentation in ‘Maria’ was unbearably ‘schmaltzy.’ Because they were viewed as a product of both Broadway and Austria, the Zurich performances of the Volkoper West Side Story added yet another layer of exoticism to the famous musical: it became a mixture of American musical theatre and Viennese operetta.

The Volksoper West Side Story shows that works of musical theatre do not necessarily reflect only the social, cultural, and political environment in which they were created, but that they continue to acquire new and significant meanings and associations through the processes of adaptation and cultural transfer. Marcel Prawy and his team not only created a landmark production that made West Side Story one of the most often performed works of American musical theatre in Europe but also left behind a fascinating record of how German-speaking Central Europeans of the mid twentieth century approached the complicated issues of racism and multi-culturalism.

The USSR

With its tense, explosive, and ultimately tragic portrayal of two societies irrationally set against each other, West Side Story was in many ways a quintessential Cold War narrative.¹ This was likely no accident, given the committed leftist, pacifist views of its creators.² It should come as no surprise, then, that its early history in the Soviet Union is intimately bound up with the complexities and contradictions of this ideological conflict and military stand-off.

Like many products of American culture at this time, the relationship of West Side Story to the Cold War is fraught with contradictions. On one level, the musical’s plot offered a profound challenge to American exceptionalism – the longstanding American ideology that understands the United States as having special, even unique features, which was used to justify global dominance during the Cold War. West Side Story was a musical about a great American city, yet it made plain that life in such cities was far from perfect, and that different racial groups did not always live peacefully alongside one another. This critical stance presented a challenge to US government efforts to downplay the gravity of inter-ethnic conflict in the USA abroad, particularly the headline-grabbing protests of the civil rights movement. The Soviet government was quick to exploit any evidence that democratic capitalism might not, in fact, produce racial or economic equality of opportunity, as the United States claimed.

Yet while West Side Story challenged American nationalist attitudes in its plot, musically it provided a remarkable, almost utopian representation of the nation in sound. In this way, it can be understood to prop up nationalist agendas. Bernstein’s score shows his longstanding commitment to musical Americanism – the quest for a uniquely American sound in music – fusing jazz, European high culture, and distinctly American folk music traditions to create American music for all Americans.³ Ironically, the music’s cultural nationalism was one of many aesthetic and musical features the show shared with the official Soviet artistic language, socialist realism. Among the other common characteristics were accessibility, appeal to an international literary canon, and the integration of music, dance, and drama.⁴

West Side Story’s complicated relationship to its nation of origin profoundly shaped the story of its reception in the Soviet Union. Some Americans, including US diplomats working in the USSR, felt its distinctly American features and its popularity with audiences meant it could effectively serve the US government’s Cold War cultural diplomacy efforts. They argued that a Soviet tour of the musical, funded by the State Department, might help convince the Soviet people of the sophistication and vigour of American culture. Its honest portrayal of US social problems was no issue, they argued, because this aspect made plain the freedom of expression that the US government permitted American artists.⁵

If West Side Story was to undertake a Soviet tour, as Porgy and Bess had so successfully done in 1955–56,⁶ it would need financial, logistical, and political support from the State Department. Without such support no US arts organization could visit the USSR. Such tours became much more possible in 1958, when Premier Khrushchev and President Eisenhower signed an agreement that allowed for artists, academics, and businesspeople from each country to visit their colleagues in the other, thereby facilitating conversation between the superpowers. Beginning that year, Hal Prince in particular worked hard to make the case that a West Side production would be ideal for such an exchange, finding support from previous cultural diplomats and government officials, and even visiting the USSR to explore possibilities in July 1959.⁷

But any such tour needed the approval of State Department officials and their advisory panels of experts in the arts. Both the Drama Advisory Panel and the Music Advisory Panel refused to approve a West Side Soviet tour when one was proposed in February 1958, arguing its story would bolster Soviet propaganda efforts more than those of the United States. The Music Panel ‘agreed that the show was wonderful’, but felt that ‘showing the gang warfare of New York will not help our cultural relations’.⁸ For the Drama Panel, similarly, ‘Gore, bloodshed and mayhem would add to the poor opinion of America that Europeans already have.’⁹ A year later, the Drama Panel decided it was willing to support a tour, but State Department officials continued to block it, just as they did in 1963, when the producers of its European tour tried one more time.¹⁰

Soviet artists sent as cultural diplomats to the United States were, perhaps surprisingly, major players in this push for a Soviet tour. One of the first Soviet artists to see West Side Story was choreographer Igor Moiseyev, whose folk dance troupe undertook a cultural diplomacy tour to the United States in 1958. On his return, Moiseyev gave a speech at the Central House of Actors in Moscow in which he praised American theatre, particularly West Side Story. Moiseyev emphatically recommended the musical to his audience, calling it a ‘choreodram’, an alternative term in Russian for the drambalet, the socialist realist style of ballet. He went on to name Jerome Robbins the greatest choreographer of the time. Even though Moiseyev did draw attention to the American problems of racism and juvenile delinquency portrayed in the musical, the overwhelming impression of his speech was deep admiration for the performance and particularly for Robbins.¹¹ Unfortunately for Moiseyev, when the New York Times ran an article about the speech, Soviet Minister for Culture Nikolai Mikhailov reprimanded the choreographer for having made a ‘gross political error’. Moiseyev pushed back via a letter to the Ministry of Culture, in which he cited American pianist Van Cliburn’s recent victory in the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition as a basis for allowing, where appropriate, honest praise of American culture.¹² Other Soviet artists saw West Side Story on cultural diplomacy tours as well, including dancers from the Bolshoi Theatre in 1959. In interviews with the American press, the Soviet dancers commented approvingly on the ‘tension of the acting and dancing’.¹³ Georgi Orvid, the Bolshoi’s director, remarked that the musical would be welcomed in the Soviet Union.¹⁴

Yet despite such encouragement, the State Department continued to deny a West Side tour of the Soviet Union. In this context, it was the 1961 film that was ultimately responsible for bringing West Side to Soviet audiences for the first time, rather than a live performance. The book of the show was translated into Russian and published in a Soviet theatre journal in the late 1950s. A performance with little singing and dancing that emphasized the inter-racial conflict was planned, but this does not seem to have taken place.¹⁵ Meanwhile, Soviet cosmonaut Gherman Titov saw the film in Washington with forty other Soviets during an official exchange in 1962. That same year, the film was shown at the Moscow Film Festival, with audiences lining up for four hours to see it and responding enthusiastically.¹⁶ Given the State Department’s longstanding anxiety about how the work might be interpreted in the USSR, the US delegation to the festival felt it necessary to emphasise that the depiction of gang warfare in New York was not representative of all US society.¹⁷ Over the next decade many US cultural diplomats on official exchange brought copies of the film to the Soviet Union to distribute as well, further increasing access to the show amongst Soviet musical theatre fans.¹⁸

The first live performances of West Side Story in the Soviet Union were locally organized productions. The first seems to have been in October 1962 at the National Academic Opera Company in Yerevan, Armenia, and another took place in December 1964, in Tallinn, Estonia.¹⁹ Neither production provided royalties to the work’s creators, despite the authors’ concerted efforts to obtain payment once they learned of the performances.²⁰ (This was anyway an impossibility for productions staged by a non-US company in the Soviet Union, because the United States and the Soviet Union had no formal royalties agreement.) In 1965 the Moscow Operetta Theatre staged it and a tour of performances by the Leningrad Lenin Komsomol Theatre took place 1968–71.²¹ These productions relied on rather literal translations of the book, meaning a lot of the slang and humour did not come across. Such companies staged West Side as a critique of US social culture. The Moscow production, for example, began with a spoken prologue: ‘Comrades, we would like to tell you about good boys brought up in hatred and shackled by hatred.’²² Early on, therefore, both the musical’s criticism of American society and its creators’ left-leaning politics were important reasons to produce West Side Story in the Soviet Union. As it became ever more present in Soviet theatres and on Soviet screens, however, emphasis on the political faded away in favour of admiration for the music and choreography and delight at the show’s popularity with audiences.²³

Indeed, West Side Story turned out to align surprisingly well with Soviet aesthetics. Soviet officials and critics appreciated that the musical was an adaptation of Shakespeare, whose plays were widely admired and performed throughout the USSR.²⁴ They likewise praised the fact that it was set in the current day and dealt with social issues. More than anything else, though, West Side Story overlapped with Soviet aesthetics in its blend of music, dance, and theatre. Soviet aesthetics often called for such a synthesis of artistic forms, an aesthetic value that coincided fairly neatly with the Golden Era ideal of integration in the American musical theatre.²⁵ Composer Arkady Ostrovsky remarked in an interview with journal Sovetskaia muzyka that the ‘synthesis’ of art in the film of West Side Story was unforgettable, a ‘union of orchestra, song, ballet, dramatic action, the play of colours, style of cinematography’.²⁶ In 1966, the editorial board of Teatr called the genre of the musical ‘very contemporary and very democratic’ – strong words of praise in the jargon of Soviet aesthetics – and used West Side Story as their leading example.²⁷

Once West Side Story took hold in the Soviet repertoire it never went away, and it remains a mainstay in Russia today. From the mid 1960s on, theatre and music critics regularly argued about how best to produce West Side and other American musicals. The question of whether or not to stage those musicals in the first place, however, was never raised.²⁸ From this period onward, critics regularly used West Side Story as a point of reference to judge other works, including Soviet productions of Rite of Spring and Carmen.²⁹ In 1976, Sovetskaia muzyka ran a glowing nine-page profile of Bernstein that praised West Side Story in the highest possible terms.³⁰ By the 1970s, West Side had so thoroughly worked its way into the repertoire that Soviet figure skaters and rhythmic gymnasts were regularly using its music at international events.³¹ In the twenty-first century, West Side Story continues to enjoy a strong reputation in Russia as one of the central pillars of an international repertoire of musical theatre.³²

Spain

West Side Story first came to Spain as the 1961 film, which became extremely popular and made a sizable impression on Spanish culture. This however did not inspire the bringing of a stage version of the show to the country as the first live performance only took place in 1983. It is tempting to blame this gap on Francisco Franco’s right-wing dictatorship, but Anglo-American musicals started to play in the country with some regularity in the 1960s and such progressive shows as Hair and Jesus Christ Superstar played in major Spanish cities in 1975, the year that Franco died.³³ No tours of West Side Story played in Spain before the 1980s, and it would have been difficult to assemble a Spanish cast in the 1960s or 1970s given the demands of finding a number of triple-threat actors who could also dance and sing well. Musical theatre was not yet that well established in Spain.

Traveling Spanish journalists saw the stage show in New York, London, and Paris in the years before the film appeared. Gustavo Puiche attended West Side Story in New York in 1957 and wrote about it in La Hora, calling it ‘a new “thing,” perfectly developed,’ a winning mixture of drama, tragedy, opera, and ballet.³⁴ Another reporter, Guy Bueno, saw the London production in 1958 and praised it in Falange.³⁵ Spanish journalists also wrote about the 1961 European tour produced by Felix Marouani, which premiered at the Alhambra Theatre in Paris.³⁶ The film did not open in Spain for more than a year after the US premiere in October 1961 and eight months after it won ten Academy Awards. Interest was high when it debuted on 7 December 1962 at the Aribau Cinema in Barcelona, followed by a run at the Cine Paz in Madrid beginning on 1 March 1963. Few Spanish theaters had the necessary projecting equipment to show it, helping these engagements to extend as people from around Spain flocked to see the film when visiting these cities. Called Amor sin barreras (‘Love without Borders’), the film played at Cine Paz until 1 April 1964 and at the Aribau for another six months. The film won Spanish cinematic prizes and the critics received it rapturously, one calling it ‘ … the most sensational, wonderful, and moving spectacle of our time.’³⁷

Two international tours of West Side Story came to Spain in the 1980s. Austrian producer Till Polla collaborated with Francisco Bermúdez to offer an international tour at the Teatro Monumental in Madrid for ten days starting on 6 October 1983, the show’s Spanish premiere.³⁸ The production, assembled in the USA, had already played in numerous countries. Dialogue and songs were in English. The instrumental accompaniment was an economic concession with six live musicians and the remainder of the orchestra recorded, an arrangement criticized in reviews. The show’s press was mixed. Pilar Sierra of El País was somewhat impressed, stating that ‘The lovers of musical comedy should not fail to go to this show, that, with a cheesiness that is all its own, retains the original freshness … ’³⁹ Victor Manuel Burell panned the rendition in Cinco Días, describing most of it as ‘deplorable.’⁴⁰ However, Fernando Bejarano of Diario 16 noted that a full house ‘ … applauded with enthusiasm and shouted “bravos” … ’⁴¹

The Broadway Musical Company of New York brought a touring production to Spain twice in 1988. Directed by Kathryn G. McCarthy and with choreography by Jane Setteducato, they billed it as the ‘Original Broadway Production’ based on staging and choreography of Jerome Robbins. They played at the Teatro Principal in Valencia from 18–21 February and then in August offered outdoor performances at festivals in Almería (in the Plaza Vieja), Santander (in the bullring), with another stop in San Javier (Murcia). This tour sometimes relied on local talent in the pit, including hiring the Orquesta Municipal de Valencia in February;⁴² in Santander there were only eight musicians accompanying.⁴³ Reviews were mixed, with praise for the principals and ensemble but dissatisfaction with playing in the bullring and when comparing the production to the film’s symphonic rendition of Bernstein’s score.

The first professional production of West Side Story that originated in Spain was in 1996 and was directed by Barcelona-based Ricard Reguant, who had overseen adaptations of other American musicals.⁴⁴ He approached Music Theatre International for the rights, which included needing to hire one of the five choreographers whom Jerome Robbins had approved. Reguant chose Barry McNabb, who has Broadway credits as a dancer from the late 1980s and worked in Spain on several occasions.⁴⁵ Reguant collaborated with Focus, a company that had produced Anglo-American musicals adapted into Catalan. Albert Mas-Griera prepared the translation/adaptation in castellano, allowing performances elsewhere in Spain. They catered to the Spanish audience who knew the film by exchanging the placements of ‘Cool’ and ‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ and staging ‘America’ with the Shark men and women. At the time, it was the most expensive show ever produced in Spain with private money. The premiere was at Barcelona’s Teatro Tivoli on 16 December 1996, where it played for five months, followed by a Spanish tour culminating in a run of more than three months at Madrid’s Teatro Nuevo Apolo ending on 1 March 1998. Reguant and McNabb assembled a good cast that dealt with the show’s varied challenges. The critical reception was generally positive. Eduardo Haro Tecglen, writing about the show in Madrid for El País, praised the young cast’s dancing and liked some of the voices, but did not think that ‘the production … comes to the quality of the film that everybody has seen.’⁴⁶

Theatrical director/choreographer Joey McKneely, who learned some of the West Side Story choreography from its creator as a dancer in Jerome Robbins’ Broadway, and conductor Donald Chan, who has conducted the show more than 3,000 times around the world, teamed up for a production at the Teatro alla Scala (Milan) in 2000. It was the first musical ever to play there and did so again in 2003. Since then, McKneely and Chan have led a sporadic world tour that has played in many countries. During summer 2009, they were in Madrid from 25 June–5 July, Santander from 22–24 August, and Gijón 26–27 August.⁴⁷ Their cast included fine young talent, including Ali Ewoldt – one of two Marias on the tour – who also played the role in the American national tour based on the 2009 Broadway version directed by Arthur Laurents and choreographed by McKneely.⁴⁸ This international tour brought twenty-six pit musicians, mostly members of the Symphony Orchestra of Lithuania.⁴⁹ The production was in English with supertitles in the host language. It played outdoors in Madrid at the Casa de Campo, a large park, in a venue with 2,500 seats. Later that summer, the tour played as part of the Festival Internacional de Santander (also sponsor of the abovenamed 1983 tour’s visit), but this time performances were indoors at the Sala Argenta del Palacio de Festivales. When all tickets sold for three performances, they added a fourth. Two sold-out shows in Gijón were at the Teatro de la Laboral. Reviews demonstrate that it was a good production: a traditional realization of the show with a solid cast, but with costumes that more than one critic found too colourful and some inequality in the singing among principals. Julio Bravo of ABC, however, praised ‘ … this dazzling and emotional production, an example of quality and high artistry.’⁵⁰

SOM Produce, a leading purveyor of musical theatre in Madrid, offered a fresh adaptation of West Side Story in 2018 in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Leonard Bernstein’s birth. They advertised it as ‘el clásico original de Broadway,’ the first Spanish production based upon the 1957 stage version, eschewing changes introduced in the 1961 film. Noted Spanish director and writer David Serrano authored the adaptation/translation, working on Sondheim’s lyrics with his brother Alejandro, a musician. Serrano’s lofty goal was to produce a version sounding like it had originally been written in castellano.⁵¹ In comparison to Mas-Griera’s 1996 version, Serrano was less literal in approach and managed dialogue and lyrics that sounded somewhat more natural.⁵² The director/choreographer was Argentinian Federico Barrios, who accepted SOM’s lead and regarded Bernstein’s music and Robbins’s choreography as ‘classic originals,’ adding a few of his own subtle touches and encouraging constant interaction between characters.⁵³ Barrios chose his cast from about 3,000 aspirants, assembling a tight ensemble featuring several experienced actors from the Spanish musical theatre scene. The pit orchestra included eighteen musicians. The critical response was very positive, with high praise for producing a difficult show and for the realization of music and choreography. Critics were somewhat more ambivalent about the acting, but there were plaudits for Silvia Álvarez, playing Anita. Some thought that the set was too large for the stage, but numerous critics raved about the show and saw its realization as a victory for Madrid’s theatrical community (see Figure 16.1). Nacho Fresno of Shangay.com stated: ‘It is not an easy assignment to stage West Side Story. And if it can be done today with success in Madrid it is thanks to the very high level that we have in this country to present shows like this.’⁵⁴ Madrid is a much smaller center for the genre than New York or London, where it is hard to imagine a similar comment from a reviewer. The production opened at the Teatro Calderón on 3 October 2018 and ran until 2 June 2019, then embarking on a national tour that ended abruptly on 14 March 2020 because of the COVID-19 virus.

Figure 16.1 The ‘Tonight’ (Quintet) in SOM’s production, Madrid, 2018.

(Photo by Javier Naval, in public domain.)

London, 1958

When West Side Story opened in London’s West End in 1958, no one could have predicted the enormity of the audience response. Although bootleg recordings of the work had been circulating for some time among the smart set (‘Gee, Officer Krupke’ was the favourite song), the more traditional musical My Fair Lady dominated the London stage at that juncture. Although West Side Story originally premiered in Manchester as a try-out city for London, it was not without a lot of preparation. This was not a straightforward transfer from one continent to another. Indeed, the British Actors’ union had to hear from experts as to why the London production would not be cast, as was standard, by British actors. Testimony from American theatrical specialists argued that the style of dancing and acting, and the physical demands of the show, would be beyond the capabilities of most British performers at this time. The union acceded to the request and American dancers and singers (including Chita Rivera and Tony Mordente, from the original cast) flew to England to prepare the show. It is important to note that British musical theatre during the 1950s was still something of a lilac-scented affair: Noel Coward plays were popular, revue-like shows featuring famous London stage comedians and singers were everywhere, and the music hall style of production and consumption was the norm for London audiences. If they wanted to see balletic moves and more serious content, they would go to the ballet. Although a series of British musicals like Fings Ain’t Wot They Used to Be and The Crooked Mile took on the lowlife or street people of London’s Soho, they were still not as edgy or dark as West Side Story. Juvenile delinquents and their relationship to a curate were featured in the British musical Johnny the Priest, but the delinquents in that show were not particularly violent and mostly expressed their sense of disenchantment with dancing ‘The Burp’ and doing a little thievery. In some ways, although shows like this were dealing with some of the same issues raised by West Side Story, they weren’t blockbusters. They paved the way for looking at the seamier side of life, but they often played in places like Stratford East, under the direction of iconoclasts like Joan Littlewood, not in mainstream London theatres. These ‘Soho’ musicals also coincided with the arrival of Brecht’s plays in London, and both took some getting used to for audiences who were accustomed to much lighter fare. Although it is safe to say that London was gearing up for more serious content in their musical theatre, the average audience member would not have seen anything like West Side Story before.

After the generally good Manchester reviews, West Side Story opened at Her Majesty’s Theatre in winter 1958. Hype that had preceded the premiere resulted in a star-studded audience: Noel Coward, Margot Fonteyn, and other luminaries of dance and stage attended. What they saw shook them to the core and resulted in a frisson of excitement over this supposedly new art form. ‘Dansical’ was the term newspapers used to describe this new kind of musical, recognizing the extent and seriousness of the dance numbers. ‘Like a shark was let loose in an aquarium’ wrote one critic of how opening night audiences responded to the work.⁵⁵ British culture was much more focused on ballet, and this art form was valued but also experienced by a wider swath of the population than in the United States. Certainly, nothing like this had ever been seen on a London stage, but it wasn’t just the dance spectacle that resonated with audiences. Britain was having similar social problems, especially with juvenile delinquency, that America had suffered, and the work struck a chord with the British public. A famous judge, Justice Salmon, attended an early performance, and newspapers eagerly wanted to know what he thought of a work that was sympathetic to teenagers at the time he was sentencing the same kinds of characters to jail time for involvement in race riots.⁵⁶

The work was not just popular, though. It caused musical theatre professionals and creators to rethink what it was they were doing to move their art form forward. One critic wrote that West Side Story made British musicals look like ‘watery gruel’ and called for a new kind of musical that would stare the American musical in the face.⁵⁷ The answer, for many, was not to replicate what the work did, but to create a sense of British identity in the wake of the ‘American Invasion’ that had taken over England particularly from Oklahoma! onwards. Although one would imagine that musical theatre changed drastically as a response to the success of the work, the most cogent response to it was Oliver! This musical (opening off the West End but soon transferring) premiered in 1960 and enjoyed great success. More importantly, it transferred to Broadway, so in essence reversed the direction in which musical theatre had been going for the last few decades. However, Oliver!, although about street urchins and containing some serious content, didn’t really match the tragic content of West Side Story, and although it was British in its source material, was mostly written in the ‘American’ style that Britons had tried to depart from.

Ultimately, West Side Story ran longer in the West End than it had on Broadway, as unlikely as that may seem. When reviews of the electric audience response to the work reached Variety, the show, which had been running half-price tickets to encourage box office, suddenly started to sell out. It seemed that for Americans, an international imprimatur meant more to them than the New York critical response, which admittedly had been mixed. Harold Prince credits the newfound interest in the work to the London response, and so it was that the work was ‘revived’ the next year mostly with the original cast, after a short national tour. Although a film deal had already been struck with the original creators after a good showing at the Tony Awards, it is safe to say that the British response really cemented the popularity of the work with American audiences and it became part of the repertory and spawned other international productions.

Finland in the Early 1960s and a Visit to Vienna

After the introduction of West Side Story in London and that production’s European tour, attempts began to mount the show in other countries. An effort by impresario Lars Schmidt to produce the musical in Copenhagen with a Nordic cast failed because they could not find enough qualified dancers.⁵⁸ An early such production took place in Finland. Rauli Lehtonen (1928–2014) was the young, energetic director of the Tampere Theatre (Tampereen Teatteri, founded 1904), located in that city in the southern part of the country. Tampere is the largest inland city in Scandinavia. Lehtonen was considering putting on a Viennese operetta, but his wife, having just seen the film of West Side Story, suggested that he produce the musical. Negotiations with Music Theatre International were difficult and Lehtonen sought assistance from the US Embassy in Helsinki. The licensing agency wanted to approve the translation and asked for at least fifty performances and an orchestra of twenty-two musicians. Finding dancers was again a major sticking point because jazz dance and related styles were new to Finland. Heikki Värtsi (1931–2013) was a young principal dancer in the Finnish National Ballet. His interest in jazz dance began in the early 1960s and he honed his skills by studying abroad and doing musical theatre and choreography for Finnish television. Värtsi’s interest in the style led to him becoming one of its major exponents in Finland; in the 1960s he founded a school at the Helsinki City Theatre that eventually led to the establishment of the professional Helsinki Dance Company.⁵⁹ He became the show’s choreographer and co-director along with Lehtonen, traveling to New York in 1963 to study jazz dance and the right dance style with an assistant of Jerome Robbins. Värtsi had seen the musical already in London and first thought it was impossible to perform it in Finland. However, he designed his own choreography suitable for the Tampere Theatre cast, and it became the cornerstone of the show’s success. The production’s contract specified that Robbins would come to Tampere to approve the choreography, but the American director/choreographer never arrived. Sauvo Puhtila (1928–2014), a noted Finnish composer, lyricist, and journalist, translated the book and lyrics of West Side Story for the production.

The Nordic premiere of the show took place at the Tampere Theatre on 13 November 1963.⁶⁰ The musical played often over the next few years, 146 times before a total audience of 70,000 by the time that the company mounted West Side Story at Vienna’s Theater an der Wien in April 1965,⁶¹ an event described below. As was the case elsewhere that the show played, it inherently carried a political message. The family of counselor George M. Ingram from the US Embassy was invited to the premiere. Later also the Finnish president Urho Kekkonen, who was skillfully balancing his nation’s foreign policy during the Cold War, saw the performance. The musical engendered discussion in reviews of social problems in the United States. Tampere was a strong theatrical centre but also known as an industrial, workers’ city, and Värtsi states in his memoirs that he faced some criticism for promoting a distinctly American musical. West Side Story became somewhat of a sensation in Finland, with productions following at the Turku City Theatre (directed by Gordon Marsh) in 1964 and the Finnish National Ballet at the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki in fall 1965 with Heikki Värtsi serving as choreographer and playing the role of Bernardo.⁶² In Helsinki the production was a success, but it raised questions of high and low culture that are embedded in the musical itself; some commentators questioned whether it was suitable for the National Opera.⁶³ Other productions later in the decade took place in the city theatres of Kuopio and Kotka. From the late 1950s onward other American musicals, such as Annie Get Your Gun, My Fair Lady, and especially Fiddler on the Roof, also became popular in Finland, replacing the operetta repertory in theatres.

It is extraordinary to consider the notion that the first time that West Side Story played in Vienna it was a Finnish production.⁶⁴ Alois Brunnthaler, editor-in-chief of the Arbeiter-Zeitung, was an advocate for Finland in Vienna and served as impresario for the Tampere Theatre company’s visit. Help with expenses came from the cities of Vienna and Tampere and the Finnish Cultural Ministry, and the ensemble had free use of the Theater an der Wien. The company of twenty actors, twenty-two dancers, twenty-six musicians, and twenty-two technical and other staff members enjoyed receptions held by Mayor Franz Jonas of Vienna and the Finnish Embassy. The sold-out show played four times over three days, the premiere attended by numerous dignitaries and greeted at its conclusion with eighteen minutes of applause. The orchestra, led by Finnish conductor Juhani Raiskinen, who later became the director of the Finnish National Opera, included fourteen Viennese violinists to augment the sound of the strings. In Vienna, Raiskinen’s ‘non-academic’ and care-free touch was admired. The cast performed mostly in Finnish, but did learn some lines and lyrics in German, including the song ‘Maria.’ Although the Theater an der Wien had recently been renovated, the Finns found themselves disappointed with the lighting equipment. Some of the show’s lead actors recorded their songs from the show for radio broadcast. The brief run coincided with an exhibition of Finnish design at the Volkshallen. Critics were mostly positive about the production, enjoying the young, lively cast; the reviewer for the Neues Österreich even suggested that this cast might succeed on Broadway. The writer for the Kurier noted that West Side Story is a demanding show that one would think would only be attempted by Europe’s largest theaters, but then one has the surprise of this company from Tampere coming in with a spirited cast, good conductor, and rich choreography. The Expressen criticized what seemed to be the production’s amateurish look, but also praised the lively performance with a fast tempo. What seemed like a courageous attempt for Rauli Lehtonen and his collaborators found success in both Tampere and Vienna.