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OPERA: A Streetcar named Desire, by Andre Previn
Streetcar goes off the rails

Tom Pillans

10Aug07

HOW ironic. A play with all the ingredients of opera built in makes a successful transition to film but fails to live up to its promise as a production on the opera stage.

Mainly, it's the music that lets us down in Opera Australia's A Streetcar Named Desire, closely based on Tennessee Williams' steamy tale of jealousy, repression, florid sexuality and a descent into madness.

   Andre Previn's musical take on the story is distinctly modern, full of discord in keeping with the conflicts ebbing and flowing on stage.

The orchestra pays homage to the blues early on, with the occasional blowzy jazz riff, but much of Previn's music here is what is inadequately described as ``challenging'' - code for difficult to understand or full of atonal passages separated by the occasional crash, bang, wallop.

Three hours and 25 minutes of this, minus two 20-minute intervals - now that's challenging.

Previn is no stranger to composing, which makes this approach seem so incomprehensible. An accomplished musician in his own right, he has composed many a film score and other musical works, including a cello concerto and a guitar concerto. He has also adapted and conducted the music for several films, including that other great southern drama, Porgy and Bess (1959).

The format of Streetcar also differs from the traditional model: Instead of sparkling setpiece arias with linking recitative, the opera consists almost solely of dialogue, sung in English.

Against a raucous background, the voices of outstanding talents such as Yvonne Kenny, Teddy Tahu Rhodes and others sometimes struggle to be heard.

Kenny, as the fading Blanche DuBois, suffers particularly, her normally rich tones subsumed by the overall clamour.

Tahu Rhodes, as the brooding Kowalski, fares better but then he has such a strong baritone, with an awesome lower register.

He looks the part too although the brooding menace that Marlon Brando brought to the 1951 film version is missing here.

I don't remember how often Brando took his T-shirt off in the movie but Tahu Rhodes' tally must be comparable (I stopped counting after three).

Antoinette Halloran is outstanding as Stella, Blanche's struggling sister, one minute clinging to a genteel past, the next lost in her own reverie, seemingly unaware of the volcanic passions threatening to erupt around her.

Stuart Skelton excels as Mitch, Blanche's latest lover, managing to combine child-like innocence with pathos.

Bruce Beresford, better known for his work in films, directed this difficult work. maintaining an even pace as the plot descends inexorably into the horror of rape (omitted from the film version) and its tragic aftermath.

Tom Woods conducted with spirit and John Stoddart's set made good use of a house set on a revolving stage.

Nigel Levings' clever use of old film clips and photographs projected on to the house and its backdrop helped underscore the sense of time and place.

Like language, opera should be able to evolve, to absorb other styles, colonise new areas and reach out to different audiences. The core of its appeal, though, is always the music itself: if  that fails then the whole production becomes fatally flawed, as it is here.

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