Recommended for Grades 6-12
In this resource, you will:
- Learn the opera’s background and synopsis
- Meet the opera’s composer
Part of the Opera Overviews collection. Explore the history of opera with our resource Understanding Opera.
A Streetcar Named Desire
by André Previn
A Streetcar Named Desire
by André Previn
A quick overview of André Previn’s 1998 opera based on the Tennessee Williams play.
Premiered
1998
Music by
André Previn
Libretto by
Philip Littell
Language
English
Background
A Streetcar Named Desire premiered in San Francisco in 1998. The opera is a faithful adaptation of one of the greatest of all American dramas, the classic Tennessee Williams work, which is universally admired in its stage and screen incarnations.
The New Orleans setting gave Previn the opportunity to create and sustain a moody atmosphere—alternately brooding, bluesy, sensual, and lyrical—as well as reveal the play’s unspoken, ominous subtext through his score.
Synopsis
Act I
Blanche DuBois arrives in New Orleans to visit her pregnant sister Stella and Stella’s husband, Stanley Kowalski. Infuriated by Blanche’s airs and her flirtatious behavior, Stanley is determined to expose the truth about why Blanche lost Belle Rive, the DuBois ancestral home in Laurel, Mississippi.
During a poker game, Blanche meets Mitch, a workmate of Stanley’s, and she sets her sights on him. Stanley erupts in a drunken rage at his losing streak in the poker game and hits Stella. Blanche and Stella flee to the neighbors upstairs. The next morning Stanley overhears Blanche beseeching her sister to leave him.
Act II
Stanley insinuates that Blanche has had some dirty dealings at a certain hotel in her hometown. When he and Stella go out for the evening, Blanche meets a young paper boy who reminds her of her husband who died years ago. Soon after, Mitch arrives to take her out for the evening.
Mitch unburdens his heart to Blanche who, in turn, tells him of her brief marriage to a young man and how she blames herself for his suicide.
Act III
Stanley breaks up Stella’s preparations for Blanche’s birthday party. He reveals Blanche’s unsavory reputation in Laurel and the fact that she was forced to leave town. At the party that night, he gives Blanche a one-way ticket back home and tells her to get out.
Later that night, while Stella has been taken to the hospital to deliver her baby, Mitch arrives and bitterly reproaches Blanche. He denounces her as someone too unclean to enter his mother’s house. She throws him out in a furious rage.
Stanley arrives from the hospital later the same night. Driven to the edge by her airs, he rapes Blanche. Blanche’s mind is fractured. She believes she is going away on an ocean cruise when in truth, Stella, unable to believe in Blanche’s accusations against Stanley, is packing Blanche’s clothes for the trip to an asylum. A doctor and nurse arrive to take Blanche away.
Read the Educator Guide
Watch an Excerpt
Lyric Opera of Chicago presents A Streetcar Named Desire.
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Lesson Exploring A Streetcar Named Desire
In this 9-12 lesson, students will analyze the setting, plot, and character development of Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire. They will discuss Williams’s craft as a playwright and his impact on American theater. Students will participate in a group reading and analysis of the play.
Lesson Memory Play in American Drama
In this 9-12 lesson, students will explore structural and technical devices of memory play through Tennessee Williams’s play, The Glass Menagerie. Students will apply the concept of memory play to write and dramatize original scripts.
Media Tennessee Williams + The Glass Menagerie
Tennessee Williams’ play The Glass Menagerie used unconventional techniques to get to what he said was “a closer approach to the truth.”
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