An early critique of the ’50s, Little Boxes culture of conformity, Leonard Bernstein’s Trouble in Tahiti (1952) follows the husband and wife pair of baritone businessman Sam and his mezzo-soprano wife Dinah as they navigate a failing marriage. Bernstein’s first and only opera in which he wrote the music and words, Trouble in Tahiti commits to conversational language of the era, even including a Greek chorus of scat-singing jazz musicians. This commitment to the common word makes Tahiti a perfect fit for SA’s Opera Piccolo, dedicated to intimate performances from classic and contemporary canons, sung always in English.