A Streetcar Named Desire (Opera)
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| Title: | A Streetcar Named Desire (end of the line longing) |
| Original title: | A Streetcar Named Desire |
Desire Street sign named after Désirée Clary , in the Bywater neighborhood of New Orleans. The old streetcar that Tennessee Williams describes ran from the French Quarter to Desire Street in Bywater until 1948 . |
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| Shape: | Opera in three acts |
| Original language: | English |
| Music: | André Previn |
| Libretto : | Philip Littell |
| Literary source: | Tennessee Williams : A Streetcar Named Desire |
| Premiere: | September 19, 1998 |
| Place of premiere: | San Francisco Opera |
| Playing time: | approx. 2 ¾ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | New Orleans in the 1940s |
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A Streetcar Named Desire is an opera in three acts by the German-American composer André Previn . The libretto, written by Philip Littell in 1995 , is based on the play of the same name by Tennessee Williams (German title: Endstation Sehnsucht ). The opera, directed by Colin Graham , premiered on September 19, 1998 at the San Francisco Opera House under the direction of the composer; the stage was designed by Michael Yeargan.
action
Plot location and time: Stanley and Stella Kowalski's New Orleans home in the late 1940s.
Duration of the performance: first and second act 1:35 h, third act 1:10 h, a total of about 2 hours and 45 minutes.
The opera tells the story of Blanche DuBois, a 30-year-old woman from the southern United States, in New Orleans at the end of the 1940s.
Blanche experienced the dissolution of her family and the auction of the once proud family property "Belle Rêve" (French for "beautiful dream"). When she also loses her job as a teacher, she desperately visits her sister Stella, who lives in New Orleans.
Stella is married to the worker Stanley Kowalski, from whom she is expecting a child, and lives in simple circumstances. She is sexually addicted to her husband, who, as the son of Polish immigrants, is blatantly despised by Blanche.
Blanche's cultivated but slightly affected behavior and the emphasis on her noble origins have a provocative effect on Kowalski, so that tensions quickly arise in the cramped living conditions. Blanche suppresses the fact that she is on the run from her past because of her affairs and seduction of a minor. She wants to start a new life with Mitch, a poker friend of Stanley's. But Stanley knows how to prevent that. To get rid of Blanche, Stanley asks about her past and learns of her missteps. He uses this information to destroy Blanche. First he spoils her relationship with her new boyfriend Mitch, then he rapes her. These humiliations destroy their minds.
Ultimately, it is mainly because of Blanche's disparity between reality and illusion that the catastrophe occurs. For the traumatized Blanche, but also for Mitch, Stella and Stanley, the hope of fulfilled love is a long way off - the end of longing. A few weeks later she was admitted to a psychiatric institution.
Work history
Emergence
The director of the San Francisco Opera House Lotfi Mansouri had asked various composers in 1994 about the composition of an opera for the play of Tennessee Williams and finally received an acceptance from André Previn. Thereupon Philip Littell wrote a libretto in coordination with the estate administrators of the texts of Tennessee Williams, which is based closely on the plot of the play, the setting then took place in 1997. After the world premiere, the play was well received by the audience and the press, so it was from was re-enacted on many American theaters.
Cast of the premiere
- Blanche DuBois, soprano - Renée Fleming
- Stanley Kowalski, baritone - Rod Gilfry
- Stella Kowalski, soprano - Elizabeth Futral
- Harold Mitchell (Mitch), tenor - Anthony Dean Griffey
- Eunice Hubbel, mezzo-soprano - Judith Forst
- Steve Hubbel, tenor - Matthew Lord
- A Young Collector, tenor - Jeffrey Lentz
- A Mexican Woman, Mezzo-Soprano - Josepha Gayer
- Pablo Gonzales - Luis Oropeza
- A Doctor - Ray Reinhardt
- A Nurse - Lynne Soffer
reception
The work of Previn is currently one of the most frequently performed contemporary operas.
- Performances in the US: New Orleans (1999), San Diego (2000), Washington, Los Angeles and Austin, Texas (2002), Virginia and Chicago (2013), St. Louis (2014) and Cleveland (2015), an abbreviated one Version of the San Francisco Opera (2007). Further performances at the Metropolitan Opera New York (2012) with Renee Flemming under James Levine , at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (2013), at Carnegie Hall (2013) with Renée Fleming, the Los Angeles Opera (2014), the Cleveland Opera (2015) and the San Jose Opera (2016).
- Performances in Europe: In June 2003 the London premiere of the opera took place at the Barbican Theater with the London Symphony Orchestra under the direction of the composer. The European premiere took place in France at the Rhein-Oper in Strasbourg (2004), director: Anja Sündermann, set and costumes: Sascha Weig. Other venues were: Opera Ireland Dublin (2006) in Ireland, Theater an der Wien (2007) with the Wiener Symphoniker under Sian Edwards as an Austrian premiere, as well as in the Theater St. Gallen (Switzerland) (2016) and in Turin (Italy).
- Performances in Germany: at the Theater Hagen (2008 under the title Endstation Sehnsucht ), at the City Theater Gießen , at the Theater Koblenz (2016) and at the Landesbühnen Sachsen in Radebeul near Dresden (2016) with the Elbland Philharmonie Sachsen under Jan Michael Horstmann , staging and Set design: Sebastian Ritschel. The German-language premiere under the title Endstation Sehnsucht took place in 2017 at the Theater Vorpommern under the musical direction of Florian Csizmadia and in a production by Horst Kupich.
- There were also performances at the Sydney Opera House under the direction of Richard Hickox and in Tokyo and Osaka (2010).
Note : Under the same title A Streetcar Named Desire , a ballet by John Neumeier based on Tennessee Williams play based on music by Sergej Prokofjew and Alfred Schnittke was performed in 1983 by the Stuttgart Ballet at the Stuttgart State Theater .
music
In Previn's score, the experiences from his film scores and musicals are linked with the late romantic musical style of Richard Strauss and the classic-modern style of Gustav Mahler , Alban Berg and Igor Stravinsky . Other music critics find echoes of Ligeti and Penderecki . Previn's music has a musical formal language drawn from the late romantic and modern periods, which reflects the psychological state and the traumatically broken consciousness of the tragic main character Blanche DuBois. The music with borrowings from jazz, blues and film music drives the plot forward, underlines scenes like in the film and directly contributes to the moving effect of the plot. Scraps of jazz music and howling blows from the saxophone, trumpet and clarinet capture the southern atmosphere.
Recordings
The world premiere was published on DVD (Arthaus / Naxos 100138) and CD (DGG 459 366-2, 3CD).
literature
- Frédéric Döhl: About the Task of Adapting a Movie Classic for the Opera Stage: On André Previn's A Streetcar Named Desire (1998) and Brief Encounter (2009). In: Frédéric Döhl and Gregor Herzfeld (eds.): Search of the "Great American Opera" - tendencies of American music theater. Waxmann, Münster 2016, pp. 147–175, see [1] (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- Frédéric Döhl: André Previn - musical versatility and aesthetic experience. Stuttgart, 2012
- David McKee: A Streetcar Named Desire. André Previn. In: The Opera Quarterly 16 (2000), pp. 718-723, Oxford University Press
Individual evidence
- ^ Program for the premiere of "A Streetcar Named Desire" (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ^ Frédéric Döhl: “Movie for the stage? On André Previn's operas ”, in: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 69/1 (2012), pp. 51–64 (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ↑ Schirmer Archive: André Previn - A Streetcar Named Desire (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ^ Opera San José - A Streetcar Named Desire (accessed October 23, 2016)
- ↑ Sascha Weig - stage designer (accessed October 23, 2016)
- ^ Program booklet Theater Koblenz (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ↑ Program of the Saxony State Theaters , October 2016
- ↑ Michael Ernst: Lockruf from Radebeul, DNN from October 1, 2016 (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ↑ Jens Daniel Schubert: Hopelessly Enge, SZ from October 4, 2016 (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ↑ Theater Vorpommern program
- ↑ Interview with director Dirk Löschner, Ostseezeitung from November 25, 2017
- ↑ Dominik Troger: Endstation Sehnsucht (accessed on October 21, 2016)
- ↑ Nicole Czerwinka: Darkness with dream potential, DNN from October 4, 2016 (accessed October 21, 2016)
- ↑ Nicole Czerwinka: Caught in the Illusion, Dresden's online magazine for culture (accessed on October 21, 2016)