Review: Staging sabotages ‘Streetcar’ at Opera San Jose

With its new production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” Opera San Jose continues its push into the contemporary repertoire. Coming on the heels of last year’s successful mounting of “Where Angels Fear to Tread,” Andre Previn’s adaptation of the great Tennessee Williams tragedy proves fertile ground for the company’s young singers. Yet, where “Angels” benefited from a unified cast and near-ideal staging, this “Streetcar,” which concludes the company’s season, often registers as a misfire.

Since its world premiere at San Francisco Opera in 1998, Previn’s opera has been often produced but never widely embraced. In the right hands, though, it can soar on the composer’s sultry, jazz-tinged score and Philip Littell’s intelligent libretto.

Unfortunately, director-designer Brad Dalton’s murky staging in the California Theatre often diminishes the opera’s strengths. Despite strong performances, apt costumes by Johann Stegman and atmospheric lighting by David Lee Cuthbert, Dalton dispenses with any semblance of a realistic framework in the home of Stanley and Stella Kowalski, where Stella’s sister, the unstable Southern belle Blanche DuBois, arrives seeking shelter and solace.

Dalton stages the action on a nearly empty stage, set with only a few pieces: a bed, several tables and chairs. As the opera begins, seven men are seen lounging around the stage. As they smoke, drink, play cards and strike macho poses, we’re given to believe they’re Stanley’s friends. But Dalton mostly employs them as furniture movers who endlessly reconfigure the set pieces between scenes. The director also uses them tastelessly as spectators in the pivotal scene in which Stanley assaults Blanche.

The staging is wearying, and it robs the opera of specificity. Characters enter and exit from multiple points; the upstairs neighbors, Steve and Eunice, appear to live in the Kowalskis’ back room. Worse is Dalton’s decision to have the ghosts of Blanche’s late husband and family members wander on and off at key intervals — a pointless, distracting device that grows old fast.

Also problematic is the placement of the orchestra, capably conducted by Ming Luke (Matthew Piatt conducts the performances of April 29 and May 1.) Why, in a theater with an adequate pit, would the company seat the orchestra upstage, behind the action? This invites coordination issues between the conductor and his cast, and it often leaves the orchestra sounding remote.

Despite these flaws, the singers often find their way to moments of dramatic potency. In its television ads, the company is using the recorded voice of Renee Fleming, who originated the Blanche role in San Francisco. Soprano Ariana Strahl lacks Fleming’s creamy tone, but her performance as the damaged, fragile and increasingly diminished Blanche succeeds on its own terms. As she traced the character’s dissolution into madness, Strahl’s focused, pure-toned vocalism yielded affecting results, particularly in Previn’s two arias for the character, “I Want Magic” and “I Can Smell the Sea Air.”

Baritone Matthew Hanscom was a forceful and aptly brutish Stanley, if a less-than-satisfying one — his singing was persuasive, but he missed a large measure of the role’s magnetic sexual swagger. Stacey Tappan was an excellent Stella, delivering an expressive account of the character’s wordless Act II song. (Eugene Brancoveanu assumes the role of Stanley, and Sara Duchovnay sings Stella, in the production’s May 1 performance.)

Deploying his muscular tenor, Kirk Dougherty captured the comic awkwardness, if not the dramatic anguish, of the suitor Mitch. Cabiria Jacobsen’s sympathetic Eunice, Michael Boley’s sheepish Steve, Silas Elash’s Doc and Teressa Foss’ Nurse made appropriate contributions, and Xavier Prado exuded enthusiasm as the Young Collector who comes under Blanche’s seductive spell.