From the opening night performance of the Met’s production of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess (which is the appellation the Gershwin state now insists on) in 2019, James Robinson’s production has been a critical and popular success. Of course, when the curtain goes up opera audiences are usually transported – a rendering of a Parisian ballroom, an artists’ garret, legendary Peking. With Michael Yeargan’s Porgy, it’s more like a facsimile of a time and place: Catfish Row, South Carolina, in the 1920s. The three-story framework presents several basic rooms and a couple of dozen of the people who live there, the women in simple dresses, the men in work clothes (Catherine Zuber’s costumes do not strike a false note). Yeargen and Robinson have opted for an opening tableau vivant, interrupted only by the exquisite sound of debutante Vuvu Mpofu as Clara, singing “Summertime”.
The large cast – the men shooting dice, the women hanging laundry, a baby being lovingly passed from man to woman – react realistically to one another; they have known each other for years. Canadian maestro Kwame Ryan has a strong technique, keeping the Met Orchestra and cast on their toes, with changes in tempi and mood from jazzy to elegiac to operatic, with various lines within ensembles clear, clean and exciting. A splendid debut.
The eternal all-white creative team for the opera has never seemed so un-problematic. Stereotypes, yes, but how could they have been avoided? Who the people of Catfish Row are and their daily vicissitudes are sharply drawn and sympathetically celebrated. The Met’s version of this historically complex score presents three hours of music with a few cuts – Jazzbo Brown’s opening piano riff is sadly missed and it would have been nice to hear the Buzzard Song, but the acres of music were brilliantly served. “Summertime” set the scene, the amazingly misogynistic and sassy “A woman is a sometime thing” was lent dark, rich tone by Benjamin Tayler.
Denyce Graves, who is retiring from the stage after these performances, delivered the scalding, Sprechstimme-like, dressing-down “You low-life skunk” to the drug dealing Sportin’ Life of Frederick Ballantine and stopped the show. Ballantine stole every scene he was in with his high-placed tenor and serpentine moves. And, of course Latonia Moore’s “My man’s gone now” left the audience stunned – is there a more effective threnody in all of opera? Mention must be made of “Red-headed woman”, sung by the vile Crown, with Ryan Speedo Green’s rolling bass-baritone voice pouring into the house.
Bess is a complicated role – a generous, beautiful woman whose addiction to drugs and the low-life are her ruination. We sympathize with her even as we watch her self-destruct. Brittany Renee used her handsome, lyrical voice and presence and held back nothing. Robinson seems to play up Bess’s flaws – she barely refuses both the “happy dust” and Crown’s advances; we root for her, but she’s an infuriating victim of her own weaknesses. Alfred Walker’s Porgy is the finest proponent of the role in this iteration: his grand voice had the edge for “I got plenty o’nuttin” and the warmth for the duets with Bess.
The full house rose to its feet when the curtain went up for the full-cast bows. It was difficult not to get caught up in the universe of Catfish Row.
