Trouble in Tahiti - Plot Analysis

Plot Analysis

There are only two main characters, a married couple named Sam and Dinah. Their son, Junior, is often referred to throughout but is never seen or heard. Other characters, including Sam's secretary Miss Brown, Dinah's psychotherapist, and a listener in the hat shop — likely one of Dinah's female friends — are spoken to in certain scenes but never seen or heard. The opera is frequently performed with minimal scenery and very simple costumes.

Little occurs in terms of plot. Trouble in Tahiti is the story of one day in the life of two desperately unhappy people, lonely, longing for love, and unable to communicate. At the end of the opera, Sam and Dinah are left in essentially the same position as they were when the opera began, with only a bleak hope of reconciliation.

The opera also features a scat singing jazz trio; Bernstein refers to them as "A Greek chorus born of the radio commercial". They sing in quasi-gibberish, sounding like an advertising jingle, about an idyllic suburban middle class-life of the American 1950s. They pop up throughout the opera to sing of the perfect suburban family life born of the American dream, only to be cut off by a fight between the two or a miserable lament.