The Gershwins' "Porgy & Bess" sizzles this June at SFO; Gockley's production more than Black

The Gershwins' Porgy & Bess.  It’s not a Black opera.  It’s the bigtime.  Dr. Marcia Green talked Porgy & Bess at the intimate and enthusiastic Bravo gathering Sunday evening at the opera house, Porgy being a hot ticket with opening night Tuesday courtesy of David Gockley. 

Dr. Marcia Green, speaker on Porgy & Bess; Shellie A. Garrett, Jr., Bravo member; Cindy Warner, writer

One of the members besides myself and Marcia had seen the dynamic dress rehearsal on Saturday afternoon. I’ve never seen so many Black people in the house and it was a younger, hipper audience. 

Here's a video from Los Angeles. 

Jesse Hamlin wrote in the pink section of the San Francisco Chronicle on Sunday that the sense of spiritual resilience and hope among the denizens of Catfish Row has a special resonance in the age of Obama.  However this is not about racial oppression and it's not about politics.  Porgy & Bess remains a love story about Porgy & Bess and Crown & Bess and Sportin' Life & Bess and Porgy & Bess.  It's a Verdian or Mozartian love story on a personal level even if the opera enjoys a grand setting.

Alteouise De Vaughn as Maria declines Chauncey Packer's Sportin' Life

Director Francesca Zambello’s production looks and sounds earthy, sexy, warm, colorful, physical, violent and magical although I only saw the dress rehearsal.  It’s not small and quaint it’s on a grand scale, leaving one feeling as if one has witnessed  American history, come to life in a new era. It’s not just a Black opera.

Plus I have to say I loved seeing one culture presented, not something politically correct or commercial, as far as casting with contrived racial quotas or deliberately mixed ethnicity.

Eric Greene as Jake and Angel Blue as Clara carrying on in the Summertime

Two words: Laquita Mitchell.

The SFO alum in her red silk halter dress plays it physical. She goes from sex pot to a member of the community in her virginal and fresh white picnic dress. However she ain’t necessarily so and reverts to woozie floozie. She’s flopping about in the arms of drug dealer Sportin’ Life with his happy dust and on her way to New York; She’s recovered from being now-dead Crown’s rape victim. The Neanderthal Crown roughed her up in the wild near the riverbank of the Mississippi. Crown the stevedore (he unloads ships on the Mississippi) throws her over his shoulder to carry her off into the thicket as she cries out in horror to the audience.

Lester Lynch as the Neanderthal womanizer Crown gives a lady a hand, Laquita Mitchell as Bess

I have to commend Lester Lynch playing it down and dirty and real. In contrast, Gregg Baker in the Hollywoodized version, the DVD, is just so gorgeous and whitewashed and commercial that anybody can see the sexy barihunk seducing Bess and leading her down the garden path.  Marcia brought this EMI version along with her but only showed Sportin Life singing It Ain't Necesarily So . . . 
 

Nevertheless. It’s astonishing, the capacity for love Bess maintains as she goes from Crown to Porgy to Sportin’ Life. Marcia says Gershwin gave Bess no theme of her own as her happiness and self-worth depends on the man she attaches herself to. So her music attaches to each of the three men, according to Gershwin.

Eric Owens as the strong and gentle Porgy provides refuge to wayward Bess, sung by Laquita Mitchell

There is a divorce song. Do you want a divorce, asks the lawyer. Yeah she do! Yeah she do! chimes the chorus.

If you look at page 365, there are no measures in the chorus for twelve pages. No bar lines. So the conductor puts down the baton. The singers are on their own so can sound different every time.

There are two fugues for Porgy & Bess, announcements of a theme . . . the fugues chase each other . . . both Catfish Row themes. A fugue appears when Porgy kills Crown.

Marcia notes Gershwin has been heralded for his compassion for characters on a scale with Verdi; He compares to Mozart; Gershwin’s melodic inventiveness compares with Bellini. However Gershwin didn’t write more since he died two years after Porgy from an inoperable brain tumor.

Zambello often has the characters come front and center and sing directly to the audience.

Moreover this is a great looking ensemble, with lots of love, arms around each other, arms around the darling young children who scamper and dance and sing. My friend Fred Matthews, a gradeschool music teacher in San Rafael who has sung the fisherman Jake in Porgy 726 or 756 times is singing Nelson. He looks dandy in his Sunday best at the picnic on Kittewah Island, pale yellow shirt with a vest and linen pants. He kicks up his heels and he’s surprisingly light on his feet.

Did anybody else sitting in the far left front of the orchestra catch the unobstructed view of eye candy taking a shower behind Porgy’s digs?

So. There in the chorus room with the music stands and the piano, Bravo members nibbled on fresh La Mediteranee and chatted enthusiastically. I chatted with Bravo’s Greg LaBlanc, who was a college DJ and now a professor of finance at my alma mater UC Berkeley, teaching survival skills.

Back to the production, this is a 1950s updated version of Porgy & Bess but to me it still has an earlier feel because of the music and even the costumes. The Jazzbo Brown Blues with chorus in the overature has been cut says Marcia. This is the version George Gershwin did and it had to be shorter. Carnegie Hall played Porgy & Bess and it was favored in Russian opera houses.

Clara starts off by singing Summertime and does so again but Bess sings Summertime in the end.

Bess, since she’s a hussy, is shunned by the community when she needs shelter after her boyfriend kills another man. Only Porgy opens his door to her bathing her in white light. He takes her in and so the community finally does too. She babysits for Clara, she cooks. You hear the Catfish Row theme.

When Bess fails to return to Porgy after encountering Crown in hiding on Kittewah Island, Porgy tells Bess upon her drug infused return that he knows she’s been with Crown. God gives cripples senses he doesn’t give to men who are whole, he tells her.

Porgy will strangle Crown with his bare hands but in SFO’s version he uses a knife. Bess does comment on his musculature and upper body strength.

The women drag Crown’s body away in a tarp, the community surrounding Porgy like brothers and sisters. White folk never sing only speak. It seems to halt the action dramatically and create tension when the police come.

 Catfish Row

What we don’t see in the SFO production is Sportin’ Life freaking out Porgy. He tells Porgy since Porgy is the killer, if Porgy looks on the face of Crown’s dead body Crown’s wounds will begin to bleed.

This superstitious and malicious notion has been cut at SFO.

SFO’s Sportin’ Life is playful and mischievous and plays it like Sammy Davis Jr. more than like Cab Calloway.

Happy Dust has it’s own theme. Flute and piccolo.

The music comes direct from the 1925 play by DuBose Heyward and Heyward is the librettist.

DuBose wants the drama and romance of Carmen and the beauty of Der Meistersinger. When Porgy sings, You’ve got Porgy! that’s 'Der Meistersinger', says William Kaiser. Moreover . . . What every woman wants is really a consistent man, says William.

Porgy has Wagnerian melodies. William Kaiser comments, Gershwin is a jazzy Wagner. Long, powerful line that builds up to unmistakeable climaxes but discordant, like 'Tristan & Isolde' , unresolved.  Marcia says the opera ends with Porgy’s theme and it goes discordant, flat. Another member commented he’s preparing for another quest after he supposedly won. He never gives up no matter how hard things are. He goes into that bright light that once bathed Bess. The music is sad though. Shellie said it reminds him of Nessun Dorma.

William continues. So Gershwin respects the imagination of the listener, the ability to resolve. He’s not so “in your face” as Verdi. Gershwin is addicting. Addicting but not perfectly satisfying until New York City! The Met!

He says Porgy never made it to the Met for years until Leontyne Price.

It hit the heart of Black culture, the violence and love; the religion and fear and belief.

William saw it at the Met in the days before subtitles, although it is in English, being an American classic.

Porgy has leitmotifs, musical themes that match the characters. One hears it as a hint when the character appears but it can change with mood or circumstance, that’s the genius of leitmotif says Marcia.

Catfish Row has a leitmotif of drudgery, same two mechanical notes. “Life in a minor key” says Bravo member Shellie Garrett, Jr.

Porgy’s leitmotif sounds upbeat, dreamy. He’s a dreamer because he’s crippled.

There’s always hope in this opera.

Porgy sounds magnanimous? His music sounds swaggering, bluesy even seductive. His leitmotif goes from dreamy to more consolidated or even conquering as when he sings You’ve got your man. Beats become less jazzy and more regular, with gravitos, says Marcia.

Although he had been singing happily. He got out of jail after winning money in craps there and as he distributes presents and shows off a sexy little dress for Bess, he’s singing again,

I got plenty o’ nuttin, and nuttin’s plenty for me . . . I ain’t got no shame doin’ what I like to do.

As we say in New Orleans, Yeah you right. Me too Porgy.