Porgy and Bess HD Rerun

Conductor...............David Robertson

Porgy...................Eric Owens
Bess....................Angel Blue

I saw Wednesday's rerun of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess from the Metropolitan opera at my local theater.  I didn't enjoy it as much as the last time.  I think the sound in my theater was not adequate to the task of reproducing the voices. 

Sacramento Philharmonic 1812 Overture

Christopher Rountree was our conductor for last night's Sacramento Philharmonic performance at the Memorial Auditorium.  The pieces were:

Selections from Aaron Copland's Rodeo.  We heard Buckaroo Holiday, Corral Nocturne, Saturday Night Waltz and Hoe Down.  It's surprising that one seldom hears much from Copland.  The pieces on the program all seemed to form a whole.

George Gershwin's Second Rhapsody.  The first Rhapsody (in Blue) is so famous that it is a surprise to hear this completely unfamiliar one.  The style is similar but the themes are new.  This is basically a piano concerto with the fine pianist Orion Weiss. 

Zhou Tian's Transcend.  Movements:  Pulse, Promise and Done.  his piece was commissioned by the Reno Philharmonic, Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera plus other orchestras, and had its world premiere April 27, 2019 in Reno, NV.  It commemorates the 150th anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869.  Interesting program note:  the rhythm of Done is based on the rhythm of DONE in Morse Code.  I found it enjoyable and showing a strong sense of how to compose for a classical orchestra.  It fit well on a program with Copland and Gershwin.

Hint for the conductor.  There's a trick to holding up your baton between movements that discourages the audience from clapping.  Perhaps the custom of remaining silent between movements is dying out.

Peter Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture.  This piece shows a Russian perspective and commemorates their successful defense of the invasion of Napoleon.  It's not an overture to anything, but follows the trend established by Berlioz to call a stand alone piece for orchestra an overture.  It is famous because it is scored for cannon which fires repeatedly toward the end.  We were spared an actual cannon.  The drum resembled a cannon heard at a distance.

The pieces were well chosen to go with one another.  There was an excellent crowd.

Porgy and Bess in HD

👍🏻
Conductor...............David Robertson
Production..............James Robinson
Choreographer.........Camille A. Brown

Porgy...................Eric Owens
Bess....................Angel Blue
Sporting Life.......Frederick Ballentine
Crown.................Alfred Walker
Clara...................Golda Schultz
Jake....................Donovan Singletary
Serena.................Latonia Moore
Maria..................Denyce Graves

Host...................Audra McDonald

Saturday we were treated to a live in HD transmission of George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.  This was a wonderful experience.  It was announced that Eric Owens had a cold, but we loved him anyway. They have spared no expense in assembling the above cast.

It was a new production shared with the ENO and some other companies.  Rooms are outlined in transparent beams, allowing for private spaces when needed and open spaces for the larger crowd scenes.  Porgy wears a brace like he had polio, a reasonable explanation for his crippling.  The only aspect of the production anyone seemed to mind was the choice to portray Clara and Jake's child as a babe in arms, a tiny, always sleeping babe in arms.  The current trend in opera is to eliminate any children without dialog and replace them with puppets, robots, or maybe inert blobs of cloth.  This reduces rehearsal time.  The baby doesn't grow with the passage of time.  It wasn't terrible, but it was a distraction.

All the supporting groups were in top form.  The great Met orchestra played Gershwin in perfect style.  One comment about the chorus said, "They're doing the Verdi Requiem."  Big singing.  We go to the opera to hear big singing, and we got it here.  The ballet was choreographed to suggest what might have been happening in this place and time.

The singing was incredible, including Eric.  But the thing that set this Porgy apart from all others was the drama.  The individual characters came to life.  The director and the actors themselves get the credit for this.  Opera is so dense and complicated, and this certainly includes Porgy and Bess, that the development of complete personalities is often left by the wayside.  We loved them all.

The extremely high quality was maintained in the interviews by Audra McDonald.  She was a friend to all.

Thank you for bringing us such a magnificent Porgy and Bess. 

Porgy and Bess on Broadway

Bess - Audra McDonald
Porgy - Norm Lewis
Sportin Life - David Alan Grier

I am watching a “non-television” film of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess from the 2012 Broadway production.  Until I saw this, I did not realize that there are actually 2 so very different versions of this work.  Until now I have only been aware of the opera version where all the text is sung and accompanied by a standard opera orchestra, the original version from 1935.

The Broadway version is substantially shorter and includes spoken dialog written for this production.  The sound of the recording isn't good enough to understand most of this.  As an opera fan and musician, I very much miss the sound I am used to.  I'm getting more of a swing band sound here with a lot of brass, or perhaps it should be described as a pit band.  If there are violins, I'm not hearing them.  The singing is pretty good, but the backup kind of leaves them hanging.  I haven't kept in touch with the Broadway sound in the 21st century. Audra is classically trained, but I don't believe the others are.  This is just my opinion.

The aim here isn't opera but is instead to produce a realistic, life-like view of southern black culture.  It is felt that presentations by large opera companies don't achieve this.  There is a lot of realistic acting, occasionally approaching actual abuse.  I've seen Audra in a full length work before, live for Mahagonny, and she is astounding here.  She quit the run early because of illness.  I can see now that she spends a lot of time shouting, not a good idea for a singer.  I remember well going to sports events as a teenager and its effect on the voice.

Though Porgy and Bess has always been controversial, my own perspective doesn't really have anything to add to this argument.  Many count the entire story to be racist. Edwin DuBose Heyward who wrote both the libretto and the novel it is based on was southern white and of the planter class.  Read Audra McDonald's take on racism in Porgy and Bess here.

This is mind altering, not at all the Porgy and Bess of memory, but still one knows that it does not exist without Gershwin.  This particular version doesn't exist without Audra McDonald.  The general impression is one of intense raw power.  It's rather frightening.

I think it is regrettable that there is no commercial film of this.  I feel glad I saw it at all, but a commercial film would result in clearer sound, making the dialog easier to understand and the music more beautiful.  It did not woo me away from my operatic version.  I could almost count this as a new opera.

Rhapsody in Blue at the Sacramento Philharmonic

Saturday's concert from the Sacramento Philharmonic and Opera was made up entirely of American music.  We even had a living composer, Loren Loiacono, who said a few words about her piece.  Our guest conductor was David Alan Miller who conducted Beethoven's 9th here in 2016.

• Sleep Furiously  . . . Loren Loiacono.  The idea comes from a sentence by Noam Chomsky, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."  This featured some lovely playing from the cello section interspersed with a lot of percussive chords.   Loiacono was a student of Stephen Stucky.

• An American in Paris . . George Gershwin.  You will remember this piece from the Gene Kelly movie.  Gershwin is fun.

• Concerto for Orchestra No.2  . .  Stephen Stucky.  He was composer in residence at the LA Philharmonic for many years, and it was there he composed this piece for them.  There  are codes in the first movement made up of people's names, but there is nothing about them that would let you know which notes they are.  He is most interested in the orchestration.

• Rhapsody in Blue  .  .  George Gershwin with pianist Kevin Cole.  This piece is like a one movement piano concerto which in this instance was played as fast as possible.  Too fast.

Our pianist played a couple of piano arrangements of Gershwin songs:  "Fascinatin Rhythm" and "I got rhythm."  He showed the appropriate jazz style but seemed to think we would be most impressed with his speed.  When I hear that someone is playing a song, I like to imagine someone is singing it. 

I apologize for complaining.  It was a fun concert, if somewhat loud.

Calefax Reed Quintet

This ensemble, seen last night at CSUS, is a quintet consisting entirely of reed instruments, specifically:

Oliver Boekhoorn, oboe (English horn in at least 2 pieces and soprano recorder)
Ivar Berix, clarinet
Raaf Hekkema, saxophone (alto and soprano?)
Jelte Althuis, bass-clarinet
Alban Wesly, bassoon

They are from Amsterdam in the Netherlands and invented this particular arrangement of instruments.  There's a lot of this going around.  If you call it a Woodwind Quintet, the instruments are flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon and French horn.  There is repertoire for this set of instruments.  Calefax create arrangements for themselves and have started to print them.

They played an interesting set of repertoire taken from pieces for organ, piano, orchestra, etc., including a fugue by Cesar Franck and Gershwin's An American in Paris.  I won't pretend to expertise in this area, but I wasn't completely sold on the resulting sonority of their particular instruments.  There is too much overlap in the pitch range and overall sound.  Any standard ensemble has a default expected tone which I did not experience here.

This isn't a criticism of their playing which was excellent.  I'm not sure who composed it, but their encore number was choreographed with each player moving about the stage.  This was fun.  They might consider playing in different formations to see how it affects the sound.  Just saying.

Porgy and Bess from San Francisco

The San Francisco Opera has released on DVD and Blue Ray their 2009 Porgy and Bess that I praised so highly here. This is the Eric Owens Porgy and Laquita Mitchell Bess. It was the experience of a lifetime.
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The Gershwin Experience

The first event of the combined Sacramento Philharmonic and Sacramento Opera was something called The Gershwin Experience, a packaged show that has already played in places like Portland, Salt Lake City, Des Moines, Savannah, Long Island, etc.  The orchestra was our local Philharmonic with Michael Morgan conducting.  The out of town guest artists were:

David Snyder, piano, vocals and narrator
Sylvia McNair, vocals
Daniel Gardner, vocals and tap dancing
Llewellyn Sanchez-Warner, 17 year old piano virtuoso

The show included photos and films from the Gershwin family files.  Gershwin died in surgery.

Michael Tilson Thomas presented Of Thee I Sing as a semi-staged orchestra concert, so I have seen this sort of thing before.  It was very enjoyable.  Llewellyn Sanchez-Warner played Rialto Ripples, Rhapsody in Blue and Allegro Agitato from Gershwin's Concerto in F, and he received two standing ovations. 

But for the opera goers in the audience there was nothing that resembled opera.  There can never be too much Gershwin.

Sacramento Opera and Philharmonic

I have tracked down the brochure for next season for the combined Opera and Philharmonic.  We have a lot more details.

August 11, 1:30, the Opera and Philharmonic will combine at Fairy Tale Town in William Land Park for the "Cat and Fiddle Music Festival."  Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf is one of the numbers in this family oriented concert.

Oct 19, 2:00 and 8:00, Community Center Theater, "Here to stay:  the Gershwin Experience" concert with Sylvia McNair, conducted by Michael Morgan.

Nov 22, 8:00, Crest Theater, International Stars of Opera Recital, Ruth Ann Swenson, soprano, Frank Lopardo, tenor, Mark Robson, piano.  This is what was meant by Una Sorpreso Lirico! 

January 11, 8:00, Community Center Theater, Michael Morgan conducts Brahms Variations on a Theme by Haydn, Stravinsky Firebird Suite and Daniel Bernard Roumain Woodbox Concerto.  Here's a short film of DBR playing an electric violin.



Feb 28, 8:00, and March 2, 2:00, CCT, Verdi's Il Trovatore.  Michael Morgan will conduct.  Leonora, Lisa Daltirus; Azucena, Tichina Vaughn; Manrico, Arnold Rawls; Count Di Luna, Marcus Jupither.

March 14, 8:00, The Assembly (1000 K st.), Violinist Rachel Barton Pine and cellist Mike Block will discuss the evolution of music from Bartok to Metalica.  This is a bold undertaking. 

April 5, 8:00, CCT, concert featureing Dvorak, Glazunov and John Williams.  Michael Morgan conducts and Rachel Barton Pine plays the Glazunov violin concerto.

June 21, 1:00 and 3:00; June 22 1:00 at Crocker Art Museum, Family opera to coincide with a Crocker exhibition.  Robert Xavier Rodriquez is the composer and the words "mariachi music" appear in the text.  I think this is just for fun.

I feel this represents a different perspective.

Measha sings Bess

Measha Brueggergosman is on the cover of Opera News this month because she is singing Bess at the Cincinnati Opera from June 28 to July 8. 

One picture is not enough.  As you can see, Measha has transformed into a babe.

Measha is a Canadian and doesn't necessarily care about attitudes in the USA.  She obviously loves her natural hair, and when asked about racism in Porgy and Bess replies, "Well, who cares?"  She understands why someone would ask the question, but, "Obviously from my perspective, I don't care.  I think that the music is so strong and the story--whether [the creators] were black or not-- is absolutely essential....  I'm not going to apply a standard to Porgy and Bess that I don't apply to other repertoire.  That just cheapens the work."  Thank you, Measha.  However one regards the characters, it's still the greatest of all American operas. 

She's been having some health problems.  We wish her well.  When I first came across her at a recital in Berkeley she wasn't doing opera.  I'm glad she's changed her mind.

Porgy and Bess on Broadway

Listen to this interview with Audra McDonald.  Click where it says Listen.  She likes the same versions I do.  Don't you love it when that happens!  Unfortunately, I can hear the strain she talks about in her voice when she talks.  There is singing.  Wonderful singing.  She makes Bess the center of the drama, which I haven't seen before.

Is Porgy and Bess Racist

Porgy and Bess is on my mind right now--I'm not really sure why.  One of the questions that constantly arises is whether or not P&B is racist.  My research has led me to this interview last October with Audra McDonald in the LA Times.

Question: Obviously one of the critiques of “Porgy and Bess” is that, even at the time it was written, but certainly in 2011, the view of black American life is racist. Do you share that view?

McDonald: When I first was exposed to “Porgy and Bess” many, many years ago, I was blown away by it — loved the music, overwhelmed by the production at the Met that I saw and thought I want to play Bess someday. But I also knew they were stereotypes that were considered racist. And lots of people, lots of African Americans and African American performers who play these roles have trouble with the stereotypical way in which these characters have been drawn. They’re called archetypes, but a lot of people call them stereotypes as well.

And in a lot of the research that I’ve done on this piece, learning about the history of it, the many different versions of it that exist and will continue to exist and will continue to morph as this piece goes on into the 21st century, I know George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward were writing this piece from a place of love and from their understanding of African American culture. But they were still outsiders in that culture, and therefore they can’t possibly have perfectly drawn fine lines for their characters, because it’s an outside culture, especially at a time when there was no race mixing to speak of. And also it was a time when it was the law in many parts of the land that, yes, black people don’t come to the theater the same day as white people come to the theater in the Jim Crow South.

Question: I read that a cast in Washington, D.C., protested that.

McDonald: Yes. The original Porgy refused to play the theater in Washington, D.C., until they [admitted a mixed-race audience], and it went back and forth and back and forth, but finally they desegregated that theater for the first time.

Question: What do we see in Bess in this production that we didn’t see before?

McDonald: I have no idea because I haven’t seen every production that’s ever been. All I can see is what our goal is, to really focus on these two people and the effect they have on each other’s life, the effect they have on the choices they make, the fact that Porgy becomes more of a man, not just in a sexual way but really tries to overcome his handicap; it’s a means to become more of a man because he’s got something to live for now that makes him feel that he can walk like a natural man and be there for her — “I’m going to take care of this. I will take care of Crown. Crown is my business.”

As far as Bess is concerned, she’s really struggling with her addictions, struggling to overcome them, really has that vision of herself in Porgy’s eyes. For her it’s staying away from her addictions long enough so she can walk toward that vision of this whole worthy woman, worthy of being loved. And there’s a beautiful passage in the book by Dubose Heywood — since the book actually gave us a lot more information — there are other men out there, but Bess says, “But God only made one Porgy, and I can only be decent with you because there’s no one like you” — I’m paraphrasing. Bess realizes that it’s Porgy that keeps her strong. It’s her reflection in his eyes that gives her a vision of what her potential is. They both do that for each other. The tragedy is that Porgy is taken away from her. She can’t hold on to him.

Summertime

I've done "Over the rainbow," so why not "Summertime?"  It might be possible to say this is the great American song.  I have picked these versions because each singer transforms it to herself.

Ella Fitzgerald

Norah Jones

Billie Holliday

Janis Joplin

Leontyne Price.  For me Leontyne is definitive.

Successful Crossover

Should musical composers try to cross over to opera, as I discussed here?  There are a few who did.

One is Jacques Offenbach who wrote many popular light operas like La Belle Hélène and Orphée aux enfers before successfully crossing over to Les contes d'Hoffmann.  He has to be considered spectacularly successful.

Another successful crossover composer was George Gershwin who created musicals like Funny Face and Of Thee I Sing before successfully crossing to Porgy and Bess.

Both of these men created their greatest theatrical works in the genre of serious opera.  Hoffmann rises to #19 in the list of most performed operas while Porgy is #30 in the list of most esteemed operas.

Many would like to consider West Side Story Leonard Bernstein's greatest opera and not his officially operatic works like Candide.  In fact some even consider West Side Story the greatest American opera.

I am fascinated to read that Richard Rodgers, composer of musicals like Oklahoma and Sound of Music, did not do his own orchestration.  This puts him more in a category with Irving Berlin, who, it is my understanding, could not read music.  

I suppose there's a point of view issue here.  The question is, is the work considered an opera by serious opera types?  Arthur Sullivan's works may be some of the most popular works ever composed by an English composer, but that doesn't get him any respect for Mikado in classical music circles.  Johann Strauss II probably rises higher in classical esteem.

This only makes the success of Hoffmann and Porgy all that more astounding.  Both are fully accepted at every level of the opera business.

Who would we be trying to encourage if we assume we intend encouragement?  Andrew Lloyd Webber?  Stephen Sondheim (did you know he was a writer on the TV series Topper?)?  The chief barrier these days is that if you look down into the pit at a musical, you will see few of the same players as in an opera orchestra.

Pit orchestra for a musical at work.

We don't think it's impossible, but you will have to forgive us if we are dubious.

P.S.  And now there is this commentary on a similar topic by David Gockley here.

Opera in America

Rise Stevens singing an aria from Natoma

I have a copy of the 1924 edition of the Victrola Book of the Opera. From my American Operas list we see Natoma, first produced at the Metropolitan opera in 1911, and Madeleine, first performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1914, both by Victor Herbert, who wasn't born in America. These are as close as we get to American opera in that era. One owns such a book for the photographs of famous singers, such as Caruso and Geraldine Farrar who had her own private dressing room at the Met. There was a policy begun in 1900 to produce an American Opera every year at the Met, but none of them held the stage even briefly except these two. Horatio Parker's Mona, 1911, was also part of the Met's effort to produce American opera.

Carmen Balthrop in Treemonisha

Another place to research opera in America is in the book Opera in America by John Dizikes. This work focuses on the cultural life of opera rather than the compositions. The first opera to rate a chapter name is Scott Joplin's Treemonisha (1910). Dizikes' text is about African-American singers and musicians rather than the opera. Treemonisha is occasionally revived, and is definitely something to look in to.

Excerpts from the current Broadway production of Porgy and Bess.  Don't you miss those opera voices.

The next operas to make it into chapter headings are Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) by Virgil Thompson and Porgy and Bess (1935), by George Gershwin. Porgy and Bess is the earliest opera by an American composer to stay in the repertoire. I think the political controversy that surrounds this opera actually enhances its power. In the past I have had my doubts, but the recent production at the San Francisco Opera has completely won me over.

Then comes the period of Gian Carlo Menotti, operas from 1938 to 1963, a native Italian whose works in English never quite lose their Italian quality. Carlisle Floyd's Susannah and Samuel Barber's Vanessa are practically all we see to interrupt Menotti's dominance. My viewing of Kiri Te Kanawa singing Vanessa left me with the feeling that this was an outstanding work that should be revived more often.

Lucy Schaufer singing "Must the winter come so soon" from Vanessa, audio only

The conclusion I have reached is that we are now living in the era of American opera. The German Hans Werner Henze, operas from 1948 to the present, provides the only competing center of opera composition in the post Einstein on the Beach, 1976, era.  Today we have John Adams, Philip Glass, John Corigliano, Mark Adamo, Jake Heggie, Stewart Wallace and several others to compose operas for us. 

Bits from The Ghosts of Versailles, a work we could see more of

In the next year and a half people in the San Francisco Bay Area will be treated to John Harbison's The Great Gatsby, Jake Heggie's Moby-Dick, Philip Glass' Einstein on the Beach, Nolan Gasser's The Secret Garden and Mark Adamo's The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.  Our cup runneth over.

Heggie's Moby-Dick

Porgy and Bess

👍🏻
Porgy, a crippled beggar: Eric Owens*
Bess: Laquita Mitchell*
Crown, a stevedore: Lester Lynch
Serena, Robbins's wife: Karen Slack
Clara, Jake's wife: Angel Blue
Maria, keeper of the cookshop: Alteouise deVaughn
Jake, a fisherman: Eric Greene
Sportin' Life, a dope peddler: Chauncey Packer

Conductor: John DeMain
Production: Francesca Zambello

I don't know if my writing is up to this, but here goes. Occasionally the planets align, the universe conspires to bring us greatness. Porgy and Bess at the San Francisco Opera was one of those times. I will attempt to tell why.

The time was moved to the 1950s, the time in our lives when the lives of our black neighbors first came to our attention. The time when they became fully realized human beings in our minds. The police look like policemen from photographs of the civil rights movement. We know what this world is like. When Porgy sings that he is going to New York to find Bess, we know the possibilities and the obstacles.

Modern productions have abandoned the cart Porgy used to ride around on in favor of crutches and less obvious crippling. We are happier to watch Porgy gain in strength through the opera and become someone who might kill his rival, someone who might indeed find Bess in New York.

I see the theatrical power of Porgy and Bess as I have never seen it before. It is a great opera in part because it is about love. In this production it was a love we could really believe in.

Only Eric Owens as Porgy and Karen Slack as Serena had ever appeared at the San Francisco Opera before. Eric Owens was here last summer in Ariodante. Karen Slack is someone whose career I follow, and she was excellent as Serena.

The whole cast was full of big voices and big acting. I liked the red wig of Laquita Mitchell as Bess--it made her easy to find on the crowded stage. She had great presence in the role. Other names: Lester Lynch as Crown, Angel Blue as Clara, Chauncey Packer as Sportin Life.

I liked them all. David Gockley insists on verisimilitude and provided us with an all black cast. Except the white characters, of course.

I haven't explained yet why it was the great Porgy and Bess of my lifetime. I noticed that the audience yelled loudly for everyone else but left unnoticed John DeMain when he came out to take his conductor's bow. I was the only one yelling. Bravo. What made this my best Porgy ever was the music. It rocked. Everyone sang big and rocked out. The chorus was the undisputed star. They were fabulous. Such consistently great music making throughout such a long, complicated piece with such a large cast must be credited to the conductor. That's his job. DeMain hangs out in Houston, which makes him a friend of Gockley.

About halfway through I realized: This is something truly wonderful.
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Gershwin on YouTube

I generally hesitate to put up things from YouTube because they go away so quickly. I found these, and I hope they stay up long enough for you to hear them.


This is Leontyne Price singing "My Man's Gone Now." She is the point where I come to this. It's Gershwin as Verdi, if you know what I mean. She wails like no one else, and this is an excellent example of Leontyne at her best.


But does that spoil me for Nina Simone singing the same song? This is Gershwin as blues, a different kind of wailing. It works, too.  Singing starts around 3'.


And so does this Audra McDonald version, Gershwin on Broadway, a place where he was most at home.

Three more different versions could hardly be imagined from three more different voices. All three are a treat. It is interesting to ponder how well this piece fits all three styles. It is at once blues, Broadway and opera, convincing in all three genres. In particular it is stunning how well he composed for the operatic voice.

Enjoy.

Porgy and Bess

My local library has a copy of the 1993 film of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, based on the Glyndebourne production, the same cast as the CD recommended by Anthony Tommasini. Why buy a CD when you can see this marvelous film?

The casting is outstanding. Only two of the voices are dubbed: Harolyn Blackwell as Clara and Bruce Hubbard as Jake, characters who sing the important arias "Summertime," that most beautiful of lullabies sung very sweetly here, and "A woman is a sometime thing," also sung to Clara's baby boy. The other parts are played by the singers, and all appear exactly as you would wish. Damon Evans is a wonderfully slimy Sportin Life. Cynthia Clarey as Serena sings the marvelously operatic "My man gone now." Crown played by Gregg Baker is appropriately sexually powerful and irresistable. Cyntha Haymon's Bess is beautiful enough to be fought over and sings very lyrically.

But this is Willard White's Porgy and Bess. Why call it anything else? His Porgy is monumental. He stands with the use of canes, making him powerful and anything but pathetic. Willard White is one of the great contemporary operatic baritones, with a beautiful voice and deep musical understanding. His performance changed my feeling about the opera completely. I liked a strong Porgy.

The details of this production are awesome: the woman smoking a corn cob pipe, everyone dressing up for the church picnic, e.g. The sense of faithful realism that pervades this film is rare in any medium, unheard of in opera.

Porgy and Bess is the iconic American opera, entirely unlike anything before or since, with the most American of stories and the most American music. In the triumvirate of theater--singing--music it is outstanding in all three. How did a pop composer like Gershwin write so well for operatic voices? P&B is a true opera.

Perhaps it took the English theater to make this opera really work. I've never seen it so well done as here. It is simply beautiful.
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Reviewing

I went to two very unusual shows while I was in San Francisco: Here Lies Jenny and a Gershwin double bill at the San Francisco Symphony. If I review them, I have to give them both pans. Bebe Neuwirth could hardly coax any sound out of her voice at all, and that has to be bad, right? And why would anyone want to revive the Gershwins’ Of Thee I Sing and Let ‘Em Eat Cake? They’re very dated political satire and very little else. So that’s bad, right?

Bebe tried to come up with an appropriate venue to present the amazing songs of Kurt Weill. She even had the guts to leave out Weill's hit tunes “Jenny’s Song” and “Mackie Messer,” otherwise known as Mack the Knife. She came up with a little bit of plot, a lot of ambience, a little bit of dancing and a lot of singing. It’s just that her voice gave out. So does that mean it's good or bad? In a ranking with other Kurt Weill shows she gets 1 or 2 stars. In a ranking with other stuff she gets at least 3 stars.

Michael Tilson Thomas, the conductor of the San Francisco Symphony, sometimes gives the impression he would rather be working Broadway. He has a certain musical vision that does not precisely overlap with standard orchestral repertoire. In fact it often does not overlap at all. He has no head for broad, slow tempos, for instance. If you are an impatient person, he’s your man. I’d never heard these Gershwin shows before, and now I have. They were well presented, and I was mildly entertained. The performers did as much with them as they possibly could. So how many stars does it get? Boring works brilliantly presented gets what?

Summertime

Fantasia sings “Summertime” by George Gershwin. In my head it exists in a performance by Leontyne Price, full and operatic. Fantasia is reported to have never heard the song before.

Fantasia’s use of the tools is awesome. She starts off with a little flourish to establish her individuality, singing very stylishly behind the beat at crucial spots. She starts ornamenting discreetly with some upper neighbors at first. (Forgive me. If you know the terms, they just slip out.) The density of ornamentation increases gradually as the piece progresses. There’s an interpolated high note in just the right spot. She ends with the now required major riff, in about the same spot and for the same purpose as a cadenza. She does all this as though she personally invented it.

This is a great performance in the style of today.