•	One-Act Opera in 18 Scenes
•	95 Minutes in Duration
•	13 Vocalists
•	2 (5) Non-Singing Roles
•	Optional Chorus
•	Through-composed
		•	Declamatory arioso
		•	Aria
		•	Large and Small Ensemble
•	Pitch centric, with representative key centers and modal harmonies
•	Full Orchestra, or Chamber Orchestra Scores
•	Piano/Vocal Score also available
Sample the music of 53rd Street, The Opera

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Characters & Key Centers
Primary Tritone-based Tonal Axis
(out of respect for Berg’s Wozzeck):

Bum 1:  B	Bum I, Baritone A raté, a restless cosmopolitan, a lost talent, possibly a victim himself, wearing a tattered letter jacket from Berkeley.
Benny:  F	Benny, Tenor Homeless, slightly disturbed – The Holy Fool, applealing in his helplessness.  Middle aged.

Keys associated with lower-class characters are a semitone away from the keys of Benny & Bum I:

Street Vendor: C	Senegalese Street Vendor, Tenor Con artist and good traditional family man, an immigrant.
Policeman: F#	Policeman, Bass Of Irish-American extraction.  Honest, but of another generation.

 

Food Vendor: B	Food Vendor, Baritone Greek or Near-Eastern.  He has a legitimate food stand, but secretly peddles drugs as well.  Nevertheless, he displays a certain human sensitivity.
Street Cleaner: E	Street Cleaner, Baritone Puerto Rican, or Caribbean, tough but sentimental, an immigrant laborer.

Tritone-based Tonal Axis, of which both pitches are associated with the Pastor.  These pitches are maximally distant from the pitches of Bum I and Benny, and this is symbolic of the social distance separating these characters, as well:

Pastor: D Pastor: A

Pastor, Tenor Unctuous and waspish alternately, mainly snobbish and insensitive.

Keys associated with higher-class characters are a semitone away from the two keys of the Pastor:

French Mother & Daughter: E	French Mother (Tourist), Mezzo-Sop Upper-middle class Parisian, worldly, impatient, scornful. French Daughter, Soprano Slightly dazzled by New York City, fascinated, open but cautious, obedient.
News  Reporter: A	Reporter, Mezzo-Soprano Dramatic, ambitious, craven, sentimental, crass, tough, modern.

 

MOMA Director & Secretary: C#	Museum Director, Baritone Jaded and overly sophisticated, the “new director” type:  connoisseur and financier of the New York Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). Secretary, Soprano Assistant to the MOMA Director.  A nervous type, pitched to please.  An accomplice.
Businessman: G	Businessman, Baritone He sells perfumes and has petty bourgeois concern for property and propriety.