At least one musical theatre training program asks all newcomers to practice by writing a song based on a scene from Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Now, composer Andre Previn (Coco) has been commissioned to write an entire opera based on the play. Previn's opera is scheduled to debut September 1998 at San Francisco Opera, with Sylvia McNair as Blanche DuBois and Rodney Gilfrey as Stanley Kowalski.
Williams' play is the story of the fragile, ethereal Blanche who is forced by reduced circumstances to come live with her sister Stella and Stella's brutal husband Stanley in New Orleans. Their conflicting styles of approaching the world eventually lead to an explosion.