Spring Awakening is a coming-of-age rock musical with music by Duncan Sheik and a book and lyrics by Steven Sater. Set in late 19th-century Germany, the musical tells the story of teenagers discovering the inner and outer tumult of adolescent sexuality.
In the musical, alternative rock is employed as part of the folk-infused rock score. Following its conception in the late s and various workshops, concerts, rewrites and its Off-Broadway debut, the original Broadway production of Spring Awakening opened at the Eugene O'Neill Theatre on December 10, The production also garnered four Drama Desk Awards , while its original cast album received a Grammy Award.
In addition, the show was revived in on Broadway and garnered three Tony Award nominations, among other honors. The success of the Broadway production has spawned several other productions worldwide, including various US productions, a West End production that won four Laurence Olivier Awards including Best New Musical , and a series of international productions. Wendla Bergmann, an adolescent in late 19th-century Germany , laments that her mother gave her "no way to handle things" and has not taught her the lessons she is meant to know as a young woman "Mama Who Bore Me".
She tells her mother that it is time she learned where babies come from, considering that she is about to be an aunt for the second time. Her mother cannot bring herself to explain the facts about conception clearly to Wendla, despite knowing her daughter is reaching puberty.
Instead, she simply tells Wendla that to conceive a child a woman must love her husband with all of her heart. At school, some teenage boys are studying Virgil in Latin class. When Moritz Stiefel, a very nervous and anxious young man, sleepily misquotes a line, the teacher chastises him harshly.
