Dr. Kowalke said that there are few 1940s musicals as daring as "Street Scene" (1947), Weill's so-called "Broadway opera" about two days in the life of a New York City tenement block's residents; "Love Life," which featured a book by Alan Jay Lerner, who went on to write "My Fair Lady"; or his final work, "Lost in the Stars" (1949) with which Weill tried to prove that a musical tragedy could exist in American theater.