Elia Kazan' film version of Tennessee William's play, A Streetcar Named
Desire, was made in 1951. It captured Oscars for Vivien Leigh (Blanche)
Kim Hunter (Stella) and Karl Malden (Mitch) and Oscar nominations for Tennessee
Williams, himself as screenplay writer; director Kazan; and Marlon Brando
(Stanley); and, of course, Alex North. Alex North's ground-breaking, jazz-based
score is justly celebrated. Therefore, with André Previn's considerable
experience of film music (he worked on more than 40 films between 1949 and
1973), this recording is of considerable interest to the serious student
of film music. Commissioned by and for the San Francisco Opera, this is Previn's
first opera. He has, however, accumulated considerable experience in writing
music for the stage. In 1969, he wrote Coco - a musical for Broadway
and, in 1974, another musical for the London stage, The Good Companions.
He also wrote, in collaboration with Tom Stoppard, Every Good Boy
Deserves Favor, a work for actors and orchestra that was premiered
by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the London Symphony Orchestra in 1976.
[Many film enthusiasts will recall that Claire Bloom made a memorable Blanche
on the London stage.]
Previn's music is essentially more 'classical' than the score composed by
Alex North but the jazz influences are nonetheless very apparent in creating
the necessary atmosphere of hopeless degradation and sleazy madness. Previn
says: "Everyone knows that I've played a lot of jazz in my lifetime, so people
are bound to say that there is a jazz influence in the harmonies or the rhythmic
patterns. I like to quote Aaron Copland who replied to questions about jazz
in his work by saying, 'I didn't grow up in a vacuum.' I did not set out
to write a jazz-influenced score, but I didn't set out not to do so either."
Previn commented that he also decided to stick closely to the speech patterns.
Many singers have noted the musicality of Tennessee Williams's writing.
The opera is, of course, dominated from the start by the character of Blanche
DuBois, and Renée Fleming is very compelling. At the start of the
opera, she arrives in New Orleans to stay with her younger sister, Stella,
who lives in a cramped apartment with her brutal husband Stanley Kowalski
(made famous by the moody magnificent Brando). Blanche berates Stella for
living in such squalor, graphically portrayed in the orchestra. Later, putting
on her airs and graces, Blanche sings of her former genteel existence that
has been shattered by impoverishment caused by relations dying and leaving
nothing. Previn's sleazy jazz figures and almost ghoulish accompaniment tells
us a different story, however, one of depravity, sex and booze, that becomes
only too clear in Act III. As Blanche gazes at herself in the mirror, Previn
allows her some sympathy and pathos. When, in Act II, she sings 'Soft people
have got to shimmer and glow', he protects her with soft-focus music that
is almost Delius-like, warm and impressionistic, before a few intrusive
concluding bars remind us of Blanche's self-delusion. Later in the same Act,
as Blanche recalls the tragedy of her first love and marriage to a homosexual
who later shot himself, the music becomes increasingly hysterical distorted
and grotesque. Blanche only feels secure in her dream world as she tells
Mitch in her ACT III aria "Real who wants real…I want magic". As Previn
says, "This aria is sultry and torpid and you can feel the heat and humidity,
as well as understand Blanche's desperation and her special grace." In Act
III after Stanley has raped her, off-stage, to a most gritty, evocative,
three-minute Interlude, Blanche descends into madness. Her final, poignant
aria 'I can smell the sea air' is very moving, as is her last line as she
is led away by the doctor, 'Whoever you are, I have always depended on the
kindness of strangers.'
Rodney Gilfrey as Stanley cannot displace the Brando image, but that is not
to say that Gilfrey fails to convey the complexities of his character: ignorant,
insensitive and brutal but also tender and vulnerable. The scene in which
he opens Stella's eyes to Blanche's delusions as he ransacks Blanche's trunk
is sardonic and vicious enough he makes the Act III denouement with Blanche
before he rapes her quite riveting. Anthony Dean Griffey is a sensitive Mitch,
mother's boy and too weak to make a satisfactory saviour for Blanche. His
Act II aria, 'I'm not a boy…' shows us his humble humanity but also
his own romantic self-delusion. Self-delusion is a character trait that is
shared by the otherwise sensible Stella, splendidly portrayed by Elizabeth
Futral. Stella can forgive the beating that Stanley has inflicted on her
and cradle him like a lost child afterwards when he has sobered sufficiently
to be remorseful.
Not a brilliant success, the unrelenting decadent harrowing story and theme
tend to grind the production down, but it is certainly a most dramatic and
intensely musical experience.
Reviewer
Ian Lace
Renée
Fleming; Elizabeth Futral; Rodney Gilfrey; Anthony Dean Giffey.San Francisco
Opera conducted by André Previn
