Joseph Horowitz's Blog, page 35

Porgy and Bess Writ Small

The current Times Literary Supplement (UK) publishes my review of Broadway’s new Porgy and Bess — informed by a book I’m writing (for W. W. Norton) about Rouben Mamoulian and Porgy and Bess. This is what it says: #

By far the most controversial show on Broadway this season is a refurbished Porgy and Bess that originated last August at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Even before the premiere, Stephen Sondheim denounced its creators – Diane Paulus, who directs, Suzan-Lori Parks, who adapted the book, and Diedre L. Murray, who adapted the score – for “willful ignorance” and “condescension toward the audience.” The Paulus /Parks/Murray Porgy soldiered on to New York, where it’s a hot ticket loudly lauded or deplored in the press. That the iconic American opera should remain an object of strident debate must say something about America itself: troubled relationships of race and national identity, of “high” and popular culture, of New World and Old bedevil American self-understanding. #

Porgy and Bess — with music by George Gershwin, a book by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin – split opinion when it opened on Broadway in 1935. No American could respond without prejudice to a black opera by a Brooklyn Jew with roots in Tin Pan Alley. Only immigrants and foreigners found it possible to acclaim Gershwin without patronizing him. A 1942 Broadway revival, recasting the opera as a musical, was more successful. In the 1950s and 1960s, Porgy and Bess was little mounted in the United States; its depiction of an impoverished African-American courtyard community was considered demeaning. Beginning in 1976, a widely seen Houston Grand Opera production revalidated Porgy and Bess and proved its operatic mettle. A 1985 production at the Metropolitan Opera was a ponderous failure. #

The new Porgy and Bess is nothing if not boldly conceived. In 1942 (five years after Gershwin’s death), Gershwin’s recitatives were replaced by dialogue, and cast and orchestra were greatly reduced in strength. Paulus and company have done that and more. We have new speeches, new harmonies, new accompaniments, even virtually new numbers. “Summertime” is a duet. “It take a long pull to get there” is a male vocal quartet distending Gershwin’s pithy fisherman’s tune. Both pit and stage are substantially amplified. #

There can be no such thing as a Gershwin purist. It is part of his genius that he cannot be categorized. The cultural fluidity of Porgy and Bess – of Gershwin, generally – is such that he is also interpretively fluid. Stravinsky insisted that his music not be interpreted. With Gershwin, interpretation is both necessary and irresistible. Rhapsody in Blue has no definitive text or length. The Concerto in F can be sentimental or sec, “Russian” or “French.” The first recordings of Porgy’s songs range in style from the operatic largesse of Lawrence Tibbett’s humbling “Oh Bess, oh where’s my Bess?” (1935) to Avon Long’s swinging “I got plenty o’ nuttin’” with the Leo Reisman Orchestra (1942). There will never be an “authentic” Porgy and Bess. #

The surest spine of the new production is its casting. Norman Lewis (Porgy), Audra McDonald (Bess), Phillip Boykin (Crown), and David Alan Grier (Sporting Life) are exceptional singing actors who transcend the generic. All four respond deftly and creatively to new tasks at hand. Leaning heavily on his cane, dragging his bad foot, Lewis is more effortfully crippled than any goatcart Porgy could be. When he smilingly confides that he has plenty of nothin’, we laugh complicitly at the knowledge that Bess is his bedmate; the whole number levitates. McDonald ruthlessly cancels her natural glamour: Bess’s allure plausibly emerges from a cage of confusion and anguish. In “Bess, you is my woman now” Porgy beckons and Bess succumbs, hesitantly deciding she’s good enough for a good man – a reading credible, fresh, memorable. At the same time, amplification works against the intimacy of this linchpin duet. And Lewis’s high, light baritone, however handsome, does require reinforcement. In fact, his notes are frequently transposed up an octave, or subject to exigent modulations. If Bess’s confrontational duet with Crown (“What you want with Bess?”) is ultimately more telling than her love duet with Porgy, it’s because McDonald and Boykin make it the evening’s most operatic number. They remind us that, on balance, Porgy and Bess is an opera after all. #

or that matter, the show’s biggest disappointment is Gershwin’s most consummated, most operatic sequence: Robbins’s funeral. Here Murray’s snipping and tucking distort the cumulative crescendo to Serena’s keening widow’s lament. Worse, Bryonha Marie Parham’s delivery is hyperbolic. Robbed of its pounding hieratic splendor, “My man’s gone now” shrinks to a passage of transitory individual pain. And this, writ large, is the central disappointment. Gershwin’s ceremony of mourning is at once a human and an epic tragedy. If the new Porgy feels small, it’s not because of abridgement or amplification or reduced forces. DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novella Porgy, the opera’s first cause, is a regional cameo documenting an exotic subculture: the Carolina Gullahs. Heyward’s story ends with Porgy, an abandoned beggar, adrift in obscurity. The opera Porgy and Bess, by comparison, feeds upon the spirituals that anchor Gershwin’s American style and subject matter: it is less a story than a communal rite, a universal saga of suffering and redemption. Its Porgy and Bess, accordingly, are archetypes. Bess is an addict, helpless submissive to Crown and to his “happy dust”; she fights her weakness strenuously, poignantly, but to no avail. Porgy is a cripple whose debility sensitizes him; held in special regard by the community, he becomes in return a moral beacon. His musical leitmotif, its primal fifth girding a bluesy minor third, compounds suffering and strength. #

That the makers of the new Porgy and Bess reject these archetypes as African-American “stereotypes” based in weakness is a reading of consequence. Bess becomes more robust, less pathetic. Porgy emerges wiser, more sophisticated, more specific. “When Gawd make cripple, He mean him to be lonely,” sings Gershwin’s archetypal Porgy. “He got to trabble dat lonesome road.” Paulus’s diminished Porgy sings, “When God made me, He made me to be lonely . . . I got to travel that lonesome road.” Gershwin’s Porgy is outsmarted by a lawyer selling Bess a “divorce” from Crown. Paulus’s Porgy is the whimsical author of Bess’s divorce; it’s his way of sealing her rehabilitation. Gershwin’s Porgy murders Crown in brutal anger. Paulus carefully justifies Porgy’s homicide by having Crown threaten to kill him first. No wonder the Paulus team struggles to find a suitable ending. McDonald’s Bess is too savvy to credibly flee to New York with Sporting Life. Lewis’s Porgy is too sensible – too civilized — to plausibly attempt limping one thousand miles in pursuit. He sings “Oh Lord, I’m on my way to a heavenly land” alone, on an emptied stage: a small, makeshift conclusion. #

Before Porgy and Bess there was the 1927 play Porgy, co-authored by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. But a crucial animator of Porgy the play was its director, Rouben Mamoulian – he became a Broadway star overnight. Mamoulian’s Porgy in certain respects created a template for Porgy and Bess – also Mamoulian-directed. No feature of either production was as widely praised as the gigantic shadows cast by the mourners at Robbins’s wake – an effect extravagantly admired by Max Reinhardt, among others. Paulus, too, silhouettes the mourners on the back wall of Serena’s room. But what Mamoulian sought and achieved was an elemental effect: voodoo and Gauguin were points of reference adduced by stunned reviewers. Paulus, predictably, eschews any suggestion of the primitive. No one is stunned. #

Another Mamoulian touch, in Porgy and Bess, stands alone; to my knowledge, it has never been copied. Paulus and McDonald agonize fruitlessly over Bess’s capitulation to Sporting Life. A tortured pantomime has Bess reprising snatches of his “There a boat that’s leaving soon for New York” while pondering a cocaine vial, then inhaling its contents, then furiously washing her hands. Heyward’s original libretto instructs Bess to accept the cocaine just before Sporting Life croons his snake-in-the-grass song. But Mamoulian has Bess reject the powder. Sporting Life then deposits it on a step leading to Porgy’s room. She runs into the room and slams the door. Sporting Life exits. Heyward keeps the stage empty while the orchestra grandly reprises Sporting Life’s song (Maestoso, fortissimo). But Mamoulian has Bess return: “[She] comes out, looks around, and hesitates; suddenly, she grabs powder and goes in house, slamming door.” The resulting counterpoint of music and gesture – the grandiose peroration juxtaposed with Bess’s pathetic self-defeat – is vintage Mamoulian, a savage ironic flourish. The orchestra’s wicked laughter unexpectedly produces one of the opera’s saddest moments. Bess’s helplessness, sympathetically portrayed, is here more affecting than anything Paulus or McDonald have come up with in their efforts to make a character more “real.” #

Because it pokes at the fissures of the American experience, Porgy and Bess will always excite debate. Be that as it may, Porgy, through growing self-knowledge, earns the note of high elation with which the opera closes. As he sings “On my way,” Gershwin seals the epic moment by having his orchestra recall Porgy’s idealistic credo (“I got plenty of nuttin’”), his rapture of fulfillment (“Bess, you is my woman now”), and the pang of Bess’s betrayal (“What you want wid Bess?”). Porgy the cripple has endured; he has emerged strong and whole. If the Paulus Porgy and Bess (which omits this layered Wagnerian summa) is ultimately constrained – if Porgy’s culminating paean seems an uncertain non sequitur – it’s not George Gershwin’s fault. #

Restoring the drama to El Amor Brujo

The two best-known scores by Manuel de Falla – El Amor Brujo and The Three-Cornered Hat - began as stage works. Today, however, we know them as symphonic suites. In the case of Amor Brujo, the loss is formidable: an austere drama turned into a picturesque entertainment. #

The original 1915 El Amor Brujo, a gitaneria with dialogue, song, and dance, is unwieldy. The subsequent orchestral suite is fluent, but squanders the work’s gypsy soul. PostClassical Ensemble’s new staging of El Amor Brujo last weekend in DC was an attempt to restore the narrative and dance components without the words and stage detail encumbering the original version. Also, we used the original 1915 instrumentation – 15 players. It’s actually preferable – an amazing exercise in instrumentation/orchestration, eschewing the plushness of the 1925 ballet score. And for the songs we engaged not an operatic mezzo, but a famous flamenco cantaora from Seville: Esperanza Fernandez. #

The orchestra was onstage behind a scrim, used for projections and lighting design. There were eight black-clad dancers. The ingenious director/choreographer was Igal Perry, from New York’s Peridance Contemporary Dance Company. Esperanza was also choreographed. The Washington Post found the result “profoundly memorable.” #

In fact, we believe we have succeeded in creating a viable stage version Amor Brujo. As there are no sets, and the dancers only require fifteen feet of stage depth, we hope to tour it internationally.

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El Amor Brujo was presented in collaboration with Georgetown University on a double bill with Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale, also fully staged. The two works were also coupled in 1925. They resonate in revealing ways. Falla, acknowledging the influence of Stravinsky on his own work, wrote of Stravinsky’s “primitivism” This is a term one could hardly apply to El Amor Brujo as it’s usually purveyed. But with a gypsy singing and gesticulating onstage, with the pared orchestration, with the austere flamenco influences on both music and plot brought into play, Falla’s appropriation of cante jondo proves gritty. This is a composer whose little home, fastidiously preserved in Granada near the Alhambra, is compact and severe. He lived ascetically with his sister. Stravinsky called him “painfully religious.”

The “Falla” we mainly know has wandered far from Falla. #

Siegfried at the Met

The current Times Literary Supplement (UK) includes my review of Fabio Luisi conducting SIegfried and Don Giovanni at the Met, as follows: #

Notwithstanding its importance as a showplace for rich boxholders — Mrs. Caroline Astor, who regularly came late and left early, was called a “walking chandelier” — the early Metropolitan Opera was a conductor’s house. During its “German seasons” (1884-1891), the dominant composer was Wagner and the dominant performer was Wagner’s protégé Anton Seidl, presiding in the pit. Not so long after, Mahler and Toscanini dominated the Met’s artistic identity. After World War I, the Italian wing was entrusted to Tullio Serafin and then Ettore Panizza, the German wing to Artur Bodanzky. Panizza and Bodanzky are largely forgotten today. How I wish the Met’s radio broadcasts would feature their broadcast recordings. Panizza’s Verdi, Bodanzky’s Wagner were incendiary, and the orchestra was a powderkeg — more explosive than any such ensemble to be heard today. (Just listen to Panizza’s 1938 “Otello” with Martinelli, Tibbett, and Rethberg, or Bodanzky’s 1937 “Siegfried” with Melchior, Schorr, and Flagstad — two of the supreme examples of operatic art ever documented in sound.) #

Much later, in the final phase of Rudolf Bing’s regime after the 1966 move to Lincoln Center, the Met was a house without great conductors. The orchestra was variable, the chorus worse. This was the setting for James Levin’s appointment as music director in 1975. Levine swiftly turned the orchestra into a reliably impressive instrument. The chorus improved beyond recognition. The repertoire was refreshed. In 2009, Levine concurrently took over the Boston Symphony. But a physical decline set in — his Met performances (never light-footed) turned massive and slack. Last September, the Met announced that Levine was bowing out of the fall’s new productions of “Don Giovanni” and “Siegfried” because of emergency surgery for a damaged vertebra. He would be replaced by Fabio Luisi — who was in the same instant named Principal Conductor. As of this writing, Levine is scheduled to return to duty in the spring — but no one knows if he really can. And so five seasons into Peter Gelb’s eventful tenure as General Manager, the company is negotiating a transition in musical authority. #

Though Luisi first appeared at the Met in 2005, he remains little known in the US. He was music director of the Dresden Staatskapelle from 2007 to 2010. He takes over the Zurich Opera in 2012-13. The Met is about glamour; Luisi is not glamorous. He defers to the orchestra when he takes his bows. He doesn’t smile at the audience. But he has won over the musicians. The best thing about the new “Don Giovanni and “Siegfried” productions is Luisi’s way of conducting the latter, and the orchestra’s way of playing it. He is the first conductor other than Levine to lead “Siegfried” at the Met since 1981. Before that, there was Erich Leinsdorf. To my ears, Luisi is a superior Wagnerian to either Levine or Leinsdorf. He achieves a striking refinement of style and sonority. His command is complete but never throttling. The balances between stage and pit are at all times impeccable. In the new “Siegfried,” the most memorable moments occur during the act one exchange between Mime and the Wanderer. Luisi seals the Wanderer’s music with a seamless majesty. Preparing Bryn Terfel’s descriptions of the gods and of the Volsungs, he achieves an unforgettable poetic hush. #

But the talk in the lobby is about Robert Lepage’s production. This is the third installment of the Lepage “Ring,” with its high tech projections and mobile metallic slabs. His virtual-reality special effects include running water, floating leaves, slimy worms, scampering rodents, and a Forest Bird that sits in Siegfried’s lap. The production works best where it is least intrusive: act one. In act two, the shallow playing space vitiates the expansiveness of Wagner’s forest; the dragon, if impressively large and animated, is neither frightening nor poignant. In act three, the magic fire frames Siegfried’s entire scene with Brȕnnhilde. Wagner asks that it disappear after Siegfried penetrates the flames for a reason: the mountaintop he attains trembles with a preternatural stillness, a preamble to apocalyptic events. This is but one example of Lepage’s failure to listen. Directing his singers in this final scene — the most psychologically complex duet in all opera — he is clueless. The steep rake of Brȕnnhilde’s “rock” doesn’t help. Only Gerhard Siegel, a terrific Mime, is consistently effective in keeping the opera’s trajectory moving. #

For “Don Giovanni” to succeed in a 4,000-seat house, it requires either an ensemble of larger-than-life vocal personalities, or an interpretation with a sharp edge. Mahler’s revelatory Met “Don Giovanni” of 1908, with a cast including Scotti, Chaliapin, Bonci, Eames, Gadski, and Sembrich, doubtless had both. The Met’s new “Don Giovanni,” directed by Michael Grandage, has neither. Remarkably, the strongest performance comes from the weakest character. Though Don Ottavio is a milquetoast, Ramon Vargas’s portrayal is so exquisite, vocally, that he steals the show. Both his great arias are delivered with exemplary diction, with pianissimo tones sustained on the breath, with elongated phrasings guided by Luisi in the pit. Grandage, a redoubtable director of plays, shows no signs of high operatic competence. Physically, the production is monotonous. The dancing at Zerlina’s wedding and Don Giovanni’s feast is over-choreographed. Inexplicably, the staging of the Don’s descent into hell is given away by the preceding statue scene: the only surprise is the duration of the conflagration. #

This season, Luisi also conducts “Manon” and “La traviata.” The Met is a company in need of strong artistic leadership. Luisi exerts authority quietly and inconspicuously. The possible parameters of his institutional vision are as yet unknowable. Will he be a fit? One hopes so. #