Here is my Monday, November 17, 2008 Chicago Sun-Times and suntimes.com preview of Lyric Opera of Chicago's first-ever production of Porgy and Bess, opening Tuesday night November 18 at the Civic Opera House.
'Porgy' at last
Lyric yearned to do the classic, but delivering wasn't easy
BY ANDREW PATNER
Chicago -- one of the great music cities, great African-American cities, and great Jewish-American cities -- has waited a long time for its major opera company to produce the great American opera, Porgy and Bess.
Embraced by both the classical and jazz worlds since its 1935 Broadway première, the string of songs by brothers George and Ira Gershwin -- born in 1890s Brooklyn and on New York's Lower East Side, respectively, to Russian Jewish immigrants -- became both instant standards ("Summertime," "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin," "It Ain't Necessarily So") and anthems of the black American experience for singers and audiences around the world. Its powerful story of life in the face of adversities still stirs the soul.
This very set of origins has made Porgy and Bess iconic and also difficult and unusually costly to produce in its full operatic form. The Gershwins, and then the Gershwin estate (composer George died at just 38 less than two years after Porgy's launch; co-lyricist Ira, in 1983), have required that the work be staged with an all-black cast of singers.
"Lyric has long wanted to do Porgy," said the company's general director, William Mason. "Ardis Krainik [Mason's predecessor] expressed this desire publicly in the 1980s, and it has never been off of our wish list.
"But planning an opera involves many considerations: You want the right production, the right conductor, assurance that the right singers will be available. And, to be frank, the current Lyric Chorus has only two African-American members. To add some 50 outstanding black professional singers -- which we did via national auditions -- as well as a large credited cast for a run of 13 performances is not inexpensive."
Lyric also wanted the right production. It was Houston Grand Opera that brought the tale of the impoverished inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina's, Catfish Row back to its operatic origins in 1976. But Mason, and many others, believed that it was not until director Francesca Zambello's new 2005 staging at the Washington National Opera that the work had as powerful a theatrical side as its landmark score deserved.
"The chance to bring Cesca's production and insight together with the conducting of John DeMain -- who has shepherded this score since the Houston re-première -- just managed to work with the rest of our schedule and planning. We would rather do this great work right than have done it first."
For Zambello (left, drawing by Tom Bachtell) and DeMain, both American artists themselves, the location and timing of this Lyric première have additional significance. "This is a work of music theatre, of course," said Zambello, who has staged some 25 new operas around the world and whose Little Mermaid has been a Broadway hit. "But it is really an opera -- the great American opera -- and to be able to do it in a great and historic opera house with the full cast and a full and truly marvelous opera orchestra is to do Porgy as it should be done.
"And to do it in Chicago, to have been in rehearsals with the cast and crew throughout the presidential election, and for all of us to be in Grant Park on the night Barack Obama was elected . . . . well, let's just say that this opera is the story of indomitable hope and aspiration of black Americans, and the timing of this run is just amazing."
DeMain (left), longtime artistic director of Madison (Wisconsin) Opera and music director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra, adds, "Porgy and Bess has been from its origins a work of tribute and respect to the African-American music and African- American lives that made this country what it is.
"These two Jewish brothers midwifed the world that DuBose Heyward captured in his original novel and said to the world: This is our opera, the lives and the music of African-Americans are our country's great gift to the world."
Comments