George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at the Met – a defining performance
A defining Gala performance of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess kicked off New York Metropolitan Opera Company’s Season at the Lincoln Center on Monday.
But on Tuesday the glitter was off the Gala. Can’t ignore the elephant that had just left the stage. Placido Domingo had been sacked from the lead role in Verdi’s Macbeth, opening that night. After fifty one years of consistent triumph, he is tossed out in ignominy, under the cloud of – as yet – unsubstantiated accusations of sexual impropriety.
Weasel-in-chief, Peter Gelb, the Met’s General Manager, claimed that Señor Domingo had “resigned”. Oh yeah? That’ll be just like John Bolton, President Trump’s Defence Adviser, “resigned”. Gun to head. Tweet. Gone.
Señor Domingo had been rehearsing for four weeks and performed routinely at the dress rehearsal on September 19th – in the glaring spotlight of known accusations which emerged in August. The jury is meant to be out. Currently he is being investigated by Los Angeles Opera, the Opera Union, Uncle Tom Cobley, Aunt Tomasa Cobley (on the grounds of gender balance) and all. So, what happened between last Thursday and this Tuesday to provoke the sacking? Nothing. Certainly, no fresh scandal had hit the public domain.
Word has it that some members of the chorus got an attack of the vapours. National Public Radio reported that “someone had called in sick”. This prompted Mr. Gelb to insist on Monday that Señor Domingo would be appearing. This would be the chorus which had rehearsed with him since mid August. Mr. Gelb explained that allegations against Señor Domingo had not yet been proven, but slipped in a cunning rider, that there should be a consensus among the cast that his appearance could go ahead. Wave big green flag for rumblings of discontent to escalate to open revolt and what happens? Revolt. Mr. Gelb caved.
Señor Domingo’s fury was evident from the addendum to his “withdrawal” statement, namely that he would “never appear at the Met again”. This was no way to treat anyone, let alone one of the Met’s most loyal performers and biggest “bums on seats” attractions. With red dots of unsold seats littering the Met website for upcoming performances, the Met needs every star attraction it’s got.
Mr. Gelb has form in muffing the handling of sensitive accusations. In August 2018 he fired James Levine, the Met’s legendary maestro for 40 years, over unspecified allegations of sexual misconduct. “Unspecified, but substantiated” was the bizarre finding of an in-house investigation. What? Try that one on a jury!
On August 6th this year Maestro Levine’s follow up lawsuit against the Met was settled on undisclosed terms. The swirling rumours surrounding him have neither been publicly substantiated, or rebutted. Whatever the rights and wrongs, this episode, too, was a monumental fritz.
The lesson for any future Met veteran at whom an accusing finger is pointed must be, that if ever you find yourself in a defensive ditch with Mr. Gelb, best move to another ditch.
Back to Catfish row, Charleston, South Carolina – the setting for George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. At a pre-performance reception hosted by the Metropolitan Opera Club – I am proud to be their only international member – “Surprise!” I stumbled into a skirmishing party of invading English. They came from the North. English National Opera North (ENO), to be exact.
This was a joint ENO/Met/Dutch National Opera production, which had already played at London’s Coliseum, ENO’s home house, to reviews praising it as “vital and sweeping” in October 2018. And that about sums it up, as reprised at the Met.
George Gershwin took his concept from “Porgy”, Charleston born DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel, later adapted in 1927 as a play by Heyward and his wife, Dorothy. The opera is set in the Charleston dock area. I am assuming the plot is familiar to most readers, so I shall refer to it only as necessary.
The plan for the opera was hatched in 1933, and a contract signed with the Theater Guild. In the summer of 1934 Gershwin and Heyward visited Folly Island, offshore Charleston, to soak up some peace and local atmosphere – and get down to composing. In a cap tip to history, the faded name, “Folly Island,” appears on the dock scenery in the picnic scene at the end of Act 1. In the libretto the island is “Kittiwah”, so the cap tip is either smart-ass or a huge boo-boo. It’s slick smart-ass.
The melodic lines are all adapted from the local music of the African American community, but folk tunes are not copied, just used as a template. Gershwin feared that trying to adapt known songs would make the work disjointed. That said, the idiom is clear and, of course, gave us a slew of iconic hits – “Summertime”, “My Man’s Gone Now”, “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’”, “It Ain’t Necessarily So” ……. the list goes on and on.
The first Bess was Anne Browne, a 20 year old student at New York’s Juilliard School, the first African-American singer admitted there. The Bess character was originally secondary, but so taken was Gershwin with Anne Browne’s voice that he expanded the part, took her for lunch after rehearsals and told her that the opera had been renamed “Porgy and Bess”.
Gershwin was insistent that the chorus, which has a pivotal acting and singing role in the work, should be all African-American. It’s a bit of a no-brainer. The Gershwin Estate, which jealously guards the composer’ s legacy, continues that insistence to this day. Which is why Met Chorus Maestro, Donald Palumbo, had his work cut out putting together a scratch chorus over the summer – for the obvious reason that the Met Chorus did not meet that benchmark.
Unusually there were two chorus masters credited, Mr Palumbo and his colleague, David Moody, normally billed as “assistant”. So huge was their task in pulling this new cohort of singers into order that Mr. Palumbo conceded equal billing. In the navel-gazing operatic world of status consciousness, such gracious courtesies matter.
The duo pulled off the impossible dream. The chorus was out of this world, rollicking along to the syncopated beat, acting with vigour and blasting the auditorium with sound in the big gospel numbers, backed up with slick choreography directed by Camille A. Brown. In other versions I have seen the choreography can tip the opera into the realm of musicals. This was resisted.
On to the fabulous cast, one of the finest assembled by the Met for years: Angel Blue – what a stonking name! – was Bess. The Californian soprano debuted at the Met as Mimi in 2017. She was memorable then, monumental on Monday.
It’s a hell of a role to sing – and an even more difficult one to act, as she rapid-fire switches emotions throughout; her sexual infatuation with her lover, the dominating, sleazy Crown – “He touch me, I feels hot”; her addiction, fed by drug dealer Sportin’ Life, a character straight from a Philip Marlowe novel; and her understanding that the crippled Porgy offers her the one long-shot chance to be decent. Ms. Blue portrayed the struggling emotions driving Bess from one man to the next with huge sympathy.
Despite oscillating wildly between her addiction to sex and drugs, her true instinct comes out in, “I loves you Porgy”. The audience felt every emotion pouring from her fluent voice.
Eric Owens, a bass baritone from Philadelphia, has appeared regularly at the Met for ten years. At 49, he is at the peak of his powers. He played a determined Porgy with an unshakeable voice, portraying a cripple, but one with hidden depths. The determination and physical strength with which he dispatched the dastardly Crown in a neck lock and a single twist of the head had the audience gasping. Never underestimate Porgy.
Mr. Owens gave us an uplifting, optimistic ending, which, considering Bess has fled to New York with Sportin’ Life after he has lured her back onto the “Happy Dust”, is a brave shout. A bit like Boris being triumphant after his prorogation has gone west.
As Porgy stood in the spotlight singing, “Oh Lawd, I’m on my way”, and the lights went down to audience mayhem, it was just possible to believe, that not only would the crippled man make it 1,000 miles to New York, but, when he got there, the natural sequel to “Porgy and Bess” would be “Porgy – and Sportin’ Life floating in the East River”.
Clara, the poignant mother and an about-to-be widow, who opens the action and sets the foreboding mood of the piece, was played by Golda Schultz, the South African soprano. Ms. Schultz has an international resumé, including two Met performances – Nanetta in Falstaff and Pamina in The Magic Flute. Her reputation for detailed presentation was well merited on Monday, as she gripped attention with her tenderness towards her child, then collapsed with grief when her fisherman husband, Jake, American bass, Ryan Speedo Green, drowned in a hurricane.
There are three “character” parts for stroll-on hawkers; “The Strawberry Woman”, Leah Hawkins; Peter, “The Honeyman”, James McCorkle; and “Crab Man”, Chauncey Packer. Prize for a mind-blowing two minute tour de force goes to Philadelphia soprano, Ms. Hawkins, in the second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Program at the Met.
She stunned with her virtuosity as she whooped through the register blasting her hawkers’ cries and delivering some stratospheric notes along with the strawberries – almost beyond the register of human hearing – with enormous power and panache. Normally C8 is tops, but she was certainly heading to Mariah Carey’s fabled 2003 Star Spangled Banner G7 – which was somehow appropriate, with the UN gathering downtown.
I have never experienced such roars of approval and “bravas” for a “bit” part. She and her fellow hawkers confirmed the depth of quality in this magnificent cast.
The orchestra bubbled and, to my ear, did a terrific job under conductor, David Robertson. But, later, a dining companion – much more experienced than I and himself a conductor – made a point that, compared with the vamping chorus on stage, the orchestra was a bit prim. On reflection, he’s probably right. He thought that after a few performances things would loosen up. The stage action would overcome any inhibitions in the pit.
The action is set in a derelict mansion in Charleston’s harbour district. Having walked those streets – disappointingly there is no Catfish Row – it was an accurate evocation of that beautiful city’s sometimes seedy mood. A clever touch was subtly spotlighting some of the main action to draw it out from the background of the ever present chorus. Each curtain drop featured a coastal background accompanied by the sound of evocative lapping of the sea.
I am sure the party guests from ENO felt that justice had been done to their joint production in New York. In these straitened financial times joint productions are inevitable and – with a pooling of all the talents – maybe no bad thing. Dr. Harry Brünjes, medical doctor, turned entrepreneur, the ENO Chairman, told me he and his team have had to drive through £25m of budget cuts in the last five years to ensure the company’s survival. That’s a story I shall return to in due course.
Monday night’s Met gala was my first. I trussed myself up in a white tie and tails to honour the occasion. How the hell did Fred Astaire ever manage a step? One guy turned up in a Highland outfit featuring tattered tartan swathes. Perhaps he’d come straight from a square go in Highlands Bar on West 10th St. Some of our ENO guests wore tweed jackets – dispensation for travellers.
Our shared experience was one of the most enthralling nights of opera I can recall. If the point of opera is to transport an audience to a different world, this Porgy and Bess succeeds.