Justin Austin and Musa Ngqungwana Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival |
This is brilliantly proven by the Glimmerglass Festival production – the orchestra conducted, appropriately, masterfully, by DeMain – as a top-notch cast brings Catfish Row to life with a sense of honesty and urgency that reminds us of theater’s power to make the artificial seem all too real.
Musa Mgqungwana brings ebullient charisma to the character of Porgy, lighting up the stage from his initial entrance, long after Act One is underway, and his voice is another marvel, a place where love and pain convincingly mix. In last summer’s “Thieving Magpie,” he sang a much less sympathetic role, so it’s a pleasure to be able to like his character this time around. And never more so than in his joyous Act Two number, “I Got Plenty o’ Nothin.’”
Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival |
The role of Sportin’ Life is a showstopper, and Frederick Ballentine (last season’s Reverend Parris) rarely stands still whenever he shimmers onto the stage, most memorably to sing “It Ain’t Necessarily So.” Other standout performances include Garrett’s menacing Crown and Judith Skinner as the Maria, the community’s conscience.
Although the show’s songs have taken on a life independent of the score – many have become nightclub standards, and Jascha Heifetz arranged several of the songs for violin and piano before the rest of the classical-music world acknowledged them – they’re worked into the fabric of the opera as motifs (Gershwin was a fan of “Meistersinger”) even as the opera itself celebrates a variety of musical styles (Gershwin also was a fan of “Wozzeck.”)
Talise Trevigne and Frederick Ballentine Photo: Karli Cadel/The Glimmerglass Festival |
Zambello’s work is so good that it’s practically transparent; she’s aided to that end by choreographer Eric Sean Fogel, whose dance numbers seem to erupt out of the natural movement of these people.
Barn-red corrugated tin defines Peter J. Davison’s set, which gives us a tenement with a feeling of jail-cell claustrophobia. It’s at its most effective during Act Two’s hurricane, as the crashes of falling panels augment the very convincing thunder and lightning effects.
And then there’s the orchestra. Like the best opera-house ensembles, they can play anything, and they embrace Gershwin’s jazzy-classical score with the familiarity of old friends – with an old master of the idiom at the helm. DeMain’s dedication to this piece is well evident.
Cries of racism have dogged “Porgy” throughout its existence, ebbing or intensifying according to the imperatives of the decade, which makes it worth remembering that its debut, in 1935, occurred when the minstrel show was still fresh in many minds. This is an anti-minstrel show, a celebration of American music that doesn’t compromise itself, and it needs productions like this one to remind us where our musical – and theatrical, and operatic – identity lies.
Porgy and Bess
Music by George Gershwin
Libretto by DuBose Heyward
Lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Based on the play “Porgy” by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward
Conducted by John DeMain
Directed by Francesca Zambello
Glimmerglass Festival, July 18
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