{"id":1540,"date":"2019-10-09T16:43:18","date_gmt":"2019-10-09T20:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1540"},"modified":"2019-10-09T16:43:24","modified_gmt":"2019-10-09T20:43:24","slug":"why-porgy-and-bess-and-the-met-need-one-another","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2019\/10\/why-porgy-and-bess-and-the-met-need-one-another.html","title":{"rendered":"Why “Porgy and Bess” and the Met Need One Another"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To read my review of the Met\u2019s new “Porgy and Bess,” just posted online by “The American Scholar,” click here<\/a>.<\/strong> It begins:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the\nMetropolitan Opera has opened its season with a fresh production of George\nGershwin\u2019s Porgy and Bess<\/em> is cause\nfor celebration. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Met came late to black America when in 1955 it engaged Marian Anderson to sing Verdi\u2014she was already 57 years old. It came late to Porgy<\/em> when in 1985 it mounted an earlier production\u2014half a century after the opera\u2019s premiere. More than its predecessor, the Met\u2019s vigorous new staging manages to vindicate a controversial cultural landmark and seal its stature as the highest creative achievement in American classical music. New York\u2019s new Porgy<\/em> is also cause for reflection and self-scrutiny. It must mean something that the most widely known American opera is a white composer\u2019s version of black American life. It has no finished form. Its reputation remains unsettled. It feeds on the fraught racial sensitivities of the current moment.          <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Porgy and Bess<\/em> was introduced in 1935, a\nprevalent response was: \u201cWhat is it?\u201d A second production, in 1941, reconceived\nthe opera as musical theater with dialogue. It subsequently became best known for\nits songs. In the 1950s, the NAACP urged black artists to stay away from it.\nMore recently, a boldly revisionist version, with Audra McDonald as Bess,\naspired to add \u201cdignity\u201d to the main characters. At every stage in this saga,\nthe accompanying discourse has been charged and ill-informed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several\nyears ago,<\/strong> I found myself addressing\na graduate seminar on 20th-century opera. I asked the students what Porgy and Bess<\/em> was about. A black\nstudent volunteered: \u201cIt\u2019s about black Americans.\u201d Wrong, I said. Several\nmonths ago, when the Met\u2019s new production (shared with the English National\nOpera and the Dutch National Opera) was given in London, a prominent local\ncritic called it a \u201cperiod piece.\u201d Wrong again, I say.           <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My review ends:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edward Johnson [the Met’s General Manager in the thirties] found Porgy and Bess<\/em> too black. James Baldwin considered it too white. Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, even Leonard Bernstein patronized Gershwin as something less than a \u201creal composer.\u201d Today that tide has turned. The modernist view of Gershwin the gifted dilettante is no longer heard. A burgeoning interest in the interwar fate of black classical music will surely promote new understandings of Gershwin as a necessary interloper between \u201cclassical\u201d and \u201cpopular\u201d genres severed by 20th-century aesthetic currents. If a whiff of opprobrium remains\u2014if Porgy and Bess<\/em> is resisted for \u201cstereotypes\u201d that do and do not inhabit Catfish Row\u2014Gershwin\u2019s opera will ever remain an inexhaustible American topic. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In retrospect, Porgy and Bess<\/em> and the Metropolitan Opera have long needed one another. In 1935, Gershwin spurned Otto Kahn\u2019s invitation to stage Porgy<\/em> at the Met. In 1938 Johnson declared the Met uninterested in George Gershwin. In the seventies, Schuyler Chapin envisioned a Porgy and Bess<\/em> conducted by Leonard Bernstein. In 1985, James Levine finally brought Porgy<\/em> into the big house, but the production floundered. This time the marriage seems real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RELATED LINKS:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I audition my favorite Porgy and Bess <\/em>recordings: https:\/\/www.wwfm.org\/post\/postclassical-explores-russian-gershwin-friday-night#stream\/0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Times Literary Supplement<\/em> review of the American Repertoire Theatre’s 2012 misproduction of Porgy and Bess<\/em>: https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2012\/02\/porgy-and-bess-writ-small.html<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To read my review of the Met\u2019s new “Porgy and Bess,” just posted online by “The American Scholar,” click here. It begins: That the Metropolitan Opera has opened its season with a fresh production of George Gershwin\u2019s Porgy and Bess is cause for celebration. The Met came late to black America when in 1955 it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-oQ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1540"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1547,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1540\/revisions\/1547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}