Matthew Epstein was my manager in the mid-‘90s, and he knew about everything that was going on, including San Francisco Opera’s plan to stage A Streetcar Named Desire in the fall of 1998. Mathew convinced San Francisco Opera that I’d be good for the role of Stanley, but I really needed to audition for André Previn [the composer]. Matthew’s assistant tried for weeks to find a time and place we could meet—we were always in different places.
I was doing a concert with Nikolaus Harnoncourt in Vienna, and after one of our rehearsals, I was walking out of the Konzerthaus and I saw a poster advertising a concert with André Previn—in three days. I called my manager and said, ‘He’s here. André’s here.’ Matthew worked it out so I could have breakfast with André the next morning.
Well, I knew Stanley Kowalski was a pretty rough guy, and since I hadn’t shaved in four days, I left it like that. I wore a bulky sweater that made me look pretty tough, and big, and manly, and I messed up my hair. When I went into breakfast I gave Previn a firm handshake and said [gruffly, lowering his voice] ‘Hey, I’m Rod Gilfry, nice to meet you.’ We talked about this and that, and Previn must’ve been sufficiently impressed, because later, he said he wanted me to do the role.
That meeting was just before the 1995 Kennedy Center Honors, where I’d been asked to sing a tribute to honoree Marilyn Horne. I flew from Vienna to Washington, and one of the festivities was a formal reception at the State Department, which I attended with my wife. I didn’t know it in advance, but Previn had also been invited to the Honors that year—and there he was at the reception! (He became an honoree in 1998.) For this occasion, of course, I was dressed in a tuxedo, and I was clean-shaven with my hair all done, even hairspray.
I walked up to Previn and said, “Andre, it’s me, Rod Gilfry.” He looked at me, and said, “You look different.” And I said, “Oh, well, I shaved.” But for the rest of the evening I could see him glancing at me with this look of consternation, and I thought, ‘Man, he’s changing his mind.’ So I called my management and said, ‘We’re in trouble.’ And it was true: Previn had seen me in a different light.
Fortunately, I had just done Don Giovanni in Amsterdam, and he was a real cad. He had long greasy hair, and I’d sung the role with a tremendous amount of grit. So after my manager sent Previn a video of that performance, he finally said OK.
That’s how I became Stanley Kowalski in ‘Streetcar’.
