Photo from Opera Theatre of St. Louis’ production of A Streetcar Named Desire by Eric Woolsey
Opera Theatre of St. Louis wrapped up its stellar 2026 season with another operatic update of a classic narrative play. A Light in the Piazza and Romeo and Juliet—love stories set in Italy, one comic and one tragic—naturally fit the format. These swooning, sentimental sagas of star-crossed youths have all the tenderness and melodrama that opera requires. But what about A Streetcar Named Desire, Tennessee Williams’ devastating expose of classism and misogyny set in post-WW II New Orleans? Sure, there’s a certain sentimentality to the fairytale daydreams of Blanche Dubois, the story’s ill-fated heroine, but those dreams stand in stark contrast to her overcrowded, smoke-filled surroundings. As it turns out, A Streetcar Named Desire makes for a beautiful, devastating tragic opera with whiskey-soaked Southern Gothic flavor.
Mr. Williams—a onetime St. Louis resident—built his legacy on tales of murder, mutilation, madness, and desperation. One of his best plays, The Glass Menagerie, is set here in St. Louis, and the Tennessee Williams Festival St. Louis is one of the highlights of our summer theater season. It’s not surprising that Opera Theatre of St. Louis would perform his most iconic doomed love story, A Streetcar Named Desire. The play made its Broadway debut in 1947, and the cast reunited for an Oscar-winning 1951 film version that clinched Marlon Brando’s reputation as the bad boy of cinema. Opera Theatre of St. Louis chose the 1995 version with a libretto by Philip Littell, famous for his operatic reworkings of classic plays. The score, composed by German-American Andre Previn, beautifully blends classical and jazz to create a French Quarter soundscape that is both elevated and earthy.
For those who dozed off during 11th grade English, here’s a recap. The play revolves around two sisters: Stella Kowalski (neé DuBois) (Lauren Snouffer) and her older sister Blanche (Sara Gartland). The DuBois family once owned a plantation in Mississippi named “Belle Reve”—“Beautiful Dream.” The name became bitterly ironic when the drunken, debauched male DuBoises let the estate fall into ruin. Now the land is near-worthless, and Blanche has been forced to leave under a cloud of scandal. Stella left years ago to marry Stanley (Thomas Glass), a former Marine and factory worker who could never earn the approval of her old-money Southern family (Blanche casually refers to him as a “Polack”).
Stella’s life with Stanley is New Orleans is no “beautiful dream,” either. Money is extremely tight and Stella is pregnant with their first child…yet Stanley is content to spend his meager salary on liquor and poker games. He’s a temperamental man who becomes downright scary when he drinks…and when Stella invites Blanche into their two-bedroom apartment, Stanley’s mood turns even darker. He comes to despise flighty Blanche and her yarns about gentlemen callers and the glory days of Belle Reve. At first, Stanley simply wants her on the first Greyhound out of town…but he eventually resorts to darker and more desperate methods, fully breaking Blanche’s fragile psyche. The finale is one of American theater’s most poignant.
A Streetcar Named Desire is driven by a power trio of complex characters—alluring and sympathetic, if not entirely likeable. Streetcar is physically demanding as well; it features some of the most harrowing scenes of domestic violence in American theater. Fortunately, this production has a capable cast. They have the vocal skill for opera and the emotional range required for Williams’s brand of dark, midcentury melodrama. Blanche is very much the star of this operetta version, and Ms. Gartland fully inhabits the role. She plays Blanche as charming and tragically deluded, a woman stuck in a past that never existed. As Stella, Ms. Snouffer tries to make sense of the sudden role reversal, caring for her troubled older sister and her unborn baby while protecting them from Stanley’s wrath. She’s repelled by her husband’s violence but irresistibly drawn to his power and virility. She desperately hopes that Stanley can be redeemed, but she’s just as misguided as Blanche and her notions about Southern hospitality and old money. Mr. Glass’ Stanley is a mixture of menace and pathos, unleashing his inner demons on the vulnerable women who share two small rooms with him. Like Mr. Brando in the film version, he has a masculine exterior and boisterous confidence that masks deep insecurity.
That Southern Gothic atmosphere is crucial to any Williams production, and Opera Theatre of St. Louis delivers. Stella and Stanley’s cramped apartment—ironically located at “632 Elysian Fields”—is faithfully recreated. It features two adjoining rooms, with a curtain giving the illusion of privacy and security; a bathroom for Stanley and Blanche to fight over; and an upper floor where Stella’s friend and confidant, Eunice, impatiently waits for her husband to return from another booze-soaked poker game. Blanche’s flights of fancy are given form by black and white films projected onto the scenery: real and imagined scenes of young lovers and courtly plantation life. When Blanche sings her stirring arias—not telling “the truth,” but what ought to be the truth—she’s cast in a blue light that underscores the sad, hopeless beauty of her fantasies.
Opera Theatre of St. Louis concluded its summer ‘26 festival season on Friday 6/26, but details for the ‘27 season have already been released. Opera heads can look forward to lovely and lavish productions of A Little Night Music, La Traviata, Cinderella and Safe Haven. Fans of Streetcar, meanwhile,can look forward to St. Louis’s annual Tennessee Williams festival in September. Interestingly, the festival’s main event is not a Williams play; it’s the St. Louis premiere of 2014 Tony winner Appropriate, written by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. A family drama set in a decaying plantation manor full of madness and family secrets, it should offer enough thrills to satisfy until the curtains rise on Opera Theatre of St. Louis again. | Rob Von Nordheim
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