Robert P. Commanday, Editor

"STREETCAR"--AMERICAN OPERA DREAM, NOT YET

As America's most recently launched opera, Andre Previn's "A Streetcar Named Desire" was cited early in the article "A New Birth For American Opera" in last Sunday's (Sept. 27) The New York Times as partial evidence of a new vitality in the field. Patrick J. Smith's comprehensive, upbeat overview of the usually lamented subject of American opera referred only to the "mixed but supportive reviews" "Streetcar" has received .

A principal reason Smith gives for the "long failure of American opera to catch fire" is the absence of a genius who would serve American opera as Verdi served Italian and world opera, or as Britten served English opera. There are other reasons however, such as those which block that possibly great American composer either from attempting an opera or from being chosen and commissioned. That in turn, is partly a matter of approach, the manner in which opera's creative teams are chosen, usually by company directors who are not thorough musicians, if they are musicians at all, and usually for criteria related to celebrity status and popularity, and for overall marketing values.

The dominant factor in the success or lack of success is the composer's concept of opera, the way the music will be written to satisfy the needs of opera. A high percentage of American opera composers Smith mentions are so text-oriented that their music ends up as a setting of the text, the predominant vocal lines and melody underpinned with accompaniment that primarily acts as support and to establish mood. When the score is mainly that, the possibility of long-lined dramatic power, deep musical characterization and the structural strength that propels whole scenes and acts is lost. Other considerations, such as the style the composer is writing in, how much he borrows, to what degree it is original, and the like are secondary matters.

The failing of Previn's score for "A Streetcar Named Desire" is precisely that the music is a mere setting of the text, following it phrase by phrase, moment by moment, hand over hand, without creating urgency or direction on the larger scale. The deterioration of Blanche behind the mask of civility, social pretenses and escapist fantasy cries out for orchestral music that characterizes her and develops the crisis that is inevitably approaching .

With the sonorous, pretty, often sensuous or impressionist and always sectional music that cushions Blanche's wonderfully vocal and lyrical part, who would guess that she's going crazy? The fact that Renee Fleming chose to play Blanche elegant and lovely to the end, drawing the correct criticism that the character never changed, would not have mattered had the music told the truth about what was going on.

That the role of Stanley Kowalski seemed underwritten in the opera was not simply the fault of the libretto and the absence of a big aria. The music does not describe his violent, aggressive, menacing nature in any way that cuts deeply. The music never develops the tension, central in the play, between Stanley and Blanche. When he rapes her in the penultimate scene, there is no preparation, no inexorable building in the music towards that, just a sudden, violent outburst.

Worse, the orchestral interlude during the ensuing blackout, instead of blasting the horror and projecting the consequences, produces repetitive percussion strokes suggestive of the sexual act in process. It was cheap, vulgar and embarrassing in the light of the event it completely mis- characterized

The play itself was a perfectly appropriate choice for an opera. Some have criticized the largely narrative and conversational style of the libretto. We have been told that the Tennessee Williams' estate granted permission only if Williams' text were not rewritten and not altered. But powerful operas have been written on largely narrative and dialog texts---"Wozzeck," "Lulu," "Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District," and the Janacek operas, to name a few.

Williams' "Streetcar" could have served if only the composer had been a more profound musician. The other issues that have been justly raised, about the derivative, catch-all style and the piece-work and obvious nature of the score all relate to that.

As we have seen, a production can sell the opera for the short term on external merits---a splendid cast and production, fine singing of eminently vocal and often appealing melodic lines, glistening, masterful orchestration and a suave, tonal harmonic style reaching back into all our memories. Even such qualities are not enough to make an opera reach out, touch, engross, enthrall and move the listener. That takes real music.