Tennessee Williams' Play A Streetcar Named Desire - An Opera Missing the Music?

Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject American Studies - Literature grade: 10 University of Freiburg (English Department) course: 20th Century American Drama language: English abstract: This paper investigates the opera adaptation of Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire by André Previn. Particular attention is going to be paid to the relation between the original play and the changes made in the opera or caused by the change of genre. Naturally an adaptation of a play into an opera necessitates a shortening of the original text to turn it into an opera libretto. The music added to the play may also change its atmosphere mood - it might even be an interpretation which is not contained in the play to that extent. Thus this paper follows up on these possible differences and examines whether André Previn succeeded in writing an opera A Streetcar Named Desire meeting the high expectations caused by the popularity of the play.