Composer by André Previn
Libretto by Philip Littell
Based on the play by Tennessee Williams
The London Symphony Orchestra
Conducted by the composer
Directed by Brad Dalton
Renée Fleming Blanch DuBois
Janice Watson Stella Kowalski
Rodney Gilfry Stanley Kowalski
Anthony Dean Griffey Mitch
Elizabeth Sikora Eunice Hubbell
Neil Jenkins Steve Hubbell
Jeffrey Lentz A Young Collector
plus Ian Midlane, Clare Leahy, Jeffrey Kaplow
Tennessee Williams' great American
play A Streetcar Named Desire premiered in New York in 1947,
directed by Elia Kazan and starring Jessica Tandy, Marlon Brando, Kim
Hunter and Karl Malden. Four years later the film version, remarkably
with the same director and main cast, all bar Tandy, who was replaced
by Vivien Leigh, swept the Oscars (Leigh, Hunter, Malden all received
awards, as did Richard Day and George James Hopkins for b/w set decoration,
besides which the film was nominated in a further eight categories)
and became a screen legend. The film made a star of Brando, and was
the first Hollywood feature to offer, courtesy of Alex North, a serious
orchestral score which incorporated elements of composed jazz. At the
same time as Streetcar was making its debut on the New York stage
an 18 year old André Previn was making his first steps into a
career as a film composer, penning uncredited background music for the
Frank Sinatra-Peter Lawford New York MGM musical, It Happened in
Brooklyn (1947). 50 years later and these parallel events intersected
when Previn, who in between had balanced phenomenally successful careers
in film music, jazz and as a classical conductor, premiered in San Francisco
his opera based upon Streetcar.
According to Anthony Holden in
the Independent on Sunday (29 June 2003) a consensus developed in San
Francisco (in other words critics were too sheepish to offer, or even
have, their own unsupported opinions) that the opera was "soundtrack
music", the implication being that it wasn't very good. Though why soundtrack
music shouldn't be very good is never addressed. It was noted that Previn
had considerable soundtrack experience in musicals. Indeed he has -
apart from writing first-rate scores for such films as The Four Horsemen
of the Apocalypse (1960 remake), Elmer Gantry (1960) and
Billy Wilder's Irma La Douce (1963) (for which he won an Oscar),
Previn won further Oscars for his work adapting Gigi, Porgy and Bess
and My Fair Lady, and was nominated an additional nine times
for Three Little Words, Kiss Me Kate, It's Always Fair Weather, Pepe,
Bells Are Ringing, Elmer Gantry, Two For the Seesaw, Thoroughly Modern
Millie and Jesus Christ, Superstar. Clearly a man who knows
more than a little about words and music.
Previn's Streetcar is nonetheless
not a musical but a fully-fledged opera, written specifically with the
beautiful voice of perhaps America's greatest current soprano, Renée
Fleming in the role of Blanche. Little need be said about the story;
the opera shortens the play but remains faithful, the tale of Blanche
reunited with her sister Stella in a rough rooming house in New Orleans
being familiar to anyone who has seen either the stage original or the
film. The first act is somewhat slow to get going, but the second and
third acts increase the dramatic impact as Blanche's character is revealed
in increasing detail and she begins to unravel under the caustic attentions
of Stella's husband, Stanley.
This is a new work, an opera based
on a play in the same way Verdi based operatic work on Shakespeare,
so it is dispiriting to find critics first noting that the production
is semi-staged - and therefore clearly intending to place more emphasis
on the music than the acting - then berating the performances, particularly
of Ms Fleming, for not being up to the standards of a first rate actress
in the play. This is not the play, and there is no first rate stage
actress in the world who can sing opera half so well as Renée
Fleming. That obvious point aside, which shouldn't need to be made but
which sadly does, Streetcar is a powerful piece of work, taking
its time to unfold over a three-and-a-half-hour evening (including an
hour's worth of intervals). Fleming sings with heartfelt commitment
and great beauty, being especially moving in her final aria in which
Blanche moves entirely into a romantic fantasy world. Janice Watson
compliments her superbly as Stella, Rodney Gilfry makes a complex and
understandable Stanley and Anthony Dean Griffey found great sympathy
in Mitch, with a performance which really won the audience over. The
acting may not be up to London or Broadway stage standards, but then
it doesn’t need to be and no reasonable person would expect it to be.
Fleming is fine, the only doubt arising from the fact that even in her
mid-forties she remains rather too remarkably beautiful to play a woman
of a certain age who is on the verge of losing her looks.
Previn's music does brilliantly
what it has been so attacked for, serving as a soundtrack to the drama,
yet expanding into richly melodic writing in the key encounters, such
as a tentatively romantic evening between Blanche and Mitch. One should
note that Previn pays due homage to North's introduction of composed
jazz into film music back in 1951, and there are also homages to other
cinema sounds of the era - Franz Waxman's Sunset Boulevard (1951)
and Bernard Herrmann's The Ghost and Mrs Muir (1948) and The
Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) may be faintly detected. North is the
film composer often cited as the finest of all for the ability to subtly
underscore dialogue, and following his model, with music which also
takes a line from Samuel Barber - particularly Knoxville: Summer
1915 - and the clear open vitality of Alan Hovhaness, Previn offers
a score which is understated, lyrical, yet when necessary, abrasively
confrontational. The rape scene for instance leaves nothing in doubt
as the ferocity of what is happening, though all we see are the two
singers standing still bathed in blood red light.
It may not be great opera in the
sense the critics expect, but it is a dramatic, entertaining and rewarding
evening well spent. And it is valid dramatic opera which acknowledges
the passage of time, the invention of both jazz and cinema, as well
as more "serious" American music of the 20th century. The
violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter, who was seated directly behind us, certainly
thought it was all worth while, standing up at the end of each act clapping
and cheering with wonderful gusto. But then perhaps she is just biased,
afterall, she did recently marry the composer.
Gary & Anita Dalkin
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