Overture Magazine - 2015-2016 Season March-April 2016 | Page 33

program notes {
on October 10, 1935. The audience loved
the show, especially Gershwin’s inspired
music and the powerful cast that sang it.
But critics were more reserved. Especially
they questioned what kind of work Porgy
and Bess was — musical, operetta, or
opera? Gershwin maintained that it was
an opera, and he had indeed followed the
operatic conventions of using continuous
music and casting the dialogue largely in
sung recitative.

Over the decades, the
power and universality of
Porgy and Bess has largely
won out. It has moved
people to tears all over
the world.
African-Americans also had criticisms.
They decried the show as a white production, created, directed, and conducted
by white men despite its black cast. Some
found the dialect language demeaning
and the depiction of African-Americans as
ignorant, superstitious and living on the
shady side of the law, insulting. But over
the decades, the power and universality of
Porgy and Bess has largely won out. It has
moved people to tears all over the world. It
has created new stars —notably Leontyne
Price and William Warfield who played
the title characters in a production toured
by the State Department in the 1950s.
Fifty years after its premiere, Porgy and Bess
scored the ultimate establishment coup
when the Metropolitan Opera gave it a new
production in 1985 under James Levine.
For many, the work remains unchallenged
as the Great American Opera.
A Guide to the Drama
and Its Musical Highlights

Act I, scene 1: After a brief orchestral
Prelude, the curtain opens on Catfish
Row. It is evening, and a jazz piano plays
in the background. Home from work,
the men of the Row have begun a crap
game. Clara, wife of Jake the fisherman,
sings a lullaby to her baby (“Summertime”). Jake then takes the baby and

sings it a more cynical song (“A Woman
is a Sometime Thing”). The crippled
Porgy joins the game (“Oh, Little Stars”),
followed by the sinister stevedore Crown,
with his flashily dressed woman, Bess, on
his arm. Crown is drunk and soon gets
into a brawl with Robbins (powerful orchestral fugue), killing him with a cotton
hook. Crown flees, leaving Bess behind;
as the police arrive, Porgy is the only one
who will give her shelter.
Scene 2: Robbins’ body is laid out in
his wife Serena’s room with a saucer on his
chest to receive donations for his burial;
the chorus mourns him (“Gone, Gone,
Gone”). Porgy urges everyone to be generous. Serena sings an anguished lament
(“My Man’s Gone Now”). The collection
amounts to only $15, but the undertaker
promises to give Robbins a decent burial.
Act II, scene 1: It is a month later, and
the residents of Catfish Row are preparing
for a holi ^H