DESCRIPTION:
I WANT MAGIC!

Real! Who wants real?
I know I don't want it. I want magic!
Magic! Yes! That's what I want!
That's what I try to give to people.

I do misrepresent things.
I don't tell the truth.
But I tell what ought to be the truth.
What it ought to be.

Yes, magic. Magic's what I try to give to people.
If that's a sin,
If that is such a sin, then let me be... damned for it!
Don't turn on that light!

It'll all look so ugly in that light.
Why not see by candlelight... or moonlight, or by starlight?
They are bright enough to see by.
Sometimes too bright.


Soprano: Pamela Andrews

Pianist: Alan Hicks


Filmed and recorded in Llewellyn Hall, Canberra, by the Australian National University, November 2010, on behalf of Pamela Andrews.
Edited for YouTube by JRR4FILM Productions.

© JRR4FILM Productions 2011

André George Previn (born Andreas Ludwig Priwin) was born in Berlin, Germany, but became a naturalised American citizen after moving as a young boy to Los Angeles with his Jewish Russian family to escape the Nazis. He has won four Academy Awards, ten Grammys, and is a pianist, conductor and composer. A Streetcar Named Desire is an opera composed by Previn in 1995, with the libretto by Philip Littell. It is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tennessee Williams (1947) and received its premiere at the San Francisco Opera during the 1998-99 season. The play is about a culture clash between two very strong characters: Blanche DuBois, a Southern Belle, and Stanley Kowalski, a dominating, physically and emotionally abusive man from the industrial working class. Blanche lives a life of grandeur and pretense, alluding to a life of virtue and culture, which, in reality, masks a serious alcohol problem. Blanche has arrived at the apartment of her sister, Stella Kowalski, who has a complex relationship with her husband, Stanley, based on a sexual chemistry that Blanche doesn't understand. Stella welcomes Blanche with much apprehension, as she doesn't think that Blanche and Stanley will get along -- and she's right. The situation worsens as Stanley discovers Blanche's true past, and attempts to "unmask" it to her; the final collision that the two characters face is a scene in which Stanley rapes Blanche, which results in a nervous breakdown for her. In the closing moments, Blanche utters her signature line to the kindly doctor who leads her away: "Whoever you are, I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."