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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 20 - 26 April 2000 Issue No. 478
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Heritage Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters Our boy in Brooklyn
By David Blake
Ballet du Grand Théâtre de Genève; Between Dusk and Dawn; world première; choreography by Giorgio Mancini; music by Nader Abbassi; Cairo Opera House Main Hall, 1 April Porgy and Bess; Cairo Opera House, Main Hall, 13 April
The dissonances of the opening tell the tale. Out of them -- the rubble of broken lives and the reek of humanity -- grows the spiked "cactus tune" of Summertime, the lullaby of irony from which the edifice of Porgy and Bess is built. It is a tale of the survival of the soul against all odds.
But the going is hard, both for the characters in the opera and for George Gershwin whose life, after the huge success of Swanee, was one endless hurry.
His questing spirit craved opera. The Fame machine, though, wanted musicals. A musical is words first, opera is prima la musica. Everything about Porgy is operatic. From the orchestral nucleus, it rotates like a spinning dynamo to the end -- "I'm on my way, Lord". And it was at this point that apparently the maker took things literally. George Gershwin, America's prospective music genius, like Verdi at the same age, was hustled away to eternity aged 38.
Porgy, therefore, had no time. Like Gershwin, it was a one off, full-time, no stop. Weird are the fates of musical genius, for Gershwin was heated by the same flame as Schubert.
There used to be a sort of parlour game, when Porgy was making it into the great opera houses of the world -- what are the four great American operas. Times have not changed. There are not four, there is still only one.
The production seen here is a gallant version which has been doing yeoman service on a worldwide tour for four years. It has marched the continents and is beginning to show the strain. But they have the right clues, and instinctively but occasionally it flares up, like beams from a muddied diamond.
Porgy is difficult. Critics have always said it needs a more soliciting, genial treatment, because grand opera was quite out of Gershwin's range. It was performed here a few years ago by members of the Bergen Opera Company, and was very moving in spite of being sung and acted by a non-black cast, proof that it is not limited to any race. It is international.
It was performed in London in 1952, with Leontine Price and William Warfield in roles which made them international stars. This was at the Stoll Opera House, Kingsway, then the largest opera stage in Europe. Then Porgy was holding his own against Il Trovatore (Andrea Chinier). There is nothing wrong with its stamina or presence.
photo: Sherif Sonbol
What was really a symphony in two movements was conducted by Zoltan Popp. The present show, though, is let-down by a sheer lack of beautiful sound. It has noise -- is loud and soft, but neither audience nor singers are given any of Gershwin's waves of sound upon which the voices ride. Rather, they have to push or shout their way through, which is tiring, and hard on listener and audience.
For the rest, the production by Elizabeth Graham was in the Porgy tradition -- Catfish Row is no Park Avenue, so benches at different levels are used as useful stage props upon which all the action takes place. The characters move from one level to the other. Some of the brawnier characters, like Crown the villain, played and sung by Stephen B Finch, take hair-raising jumps.
Finch is famous as Crown, the flashy torso of the story upon which Bess nestles when under the influence of her "happy dust" cocaine cocktail. Crown needs a physical filling, which he ejaculates all over the stage. All the singers sing, even though they go beyond this when they are forced to shout.
Clara (Angela Owens) and Serena (Toleya Andrews), the pair of Catfish warblers, know how to dominate the many ensembles -- hefty angels who drive away the drug peddler Sporting (John Le Sane). He looks the part, in a dark sexy suit with an inch-wide white stripe. He is Bess's bad angel, who offers her, in her decline, a taste of something like poisoned honey, as he jokes.
The honey man, and the strawberry woman of Joan Donovan, fit perfectly in the picture. They are not just singers, because Gershwin learned from Puccini to master ordinary conversational sounds.
But the singing-actors can go only so far. The life line of an opera is its musical pattern, and with this show the steely pattern intermittently goes lax. This is not Cats or Phantom of the Opera. In spite of what the critics say, it is an opera, and floats only on its notes, from which the message comes. And the message is sad. However you feel about elegy, it is sad but triumphant.
Only a profligate of Gershwin's quality would dare put his star aria in the first ten minutes of the show. Summertime is like a Mahler song, which makes the mood that goes on to the end.
The two keys to the work, Porgy (Michael Bossard) and Bess (Elizabeth Graham) do their best to hold it in shape. He has a tall, dark voice, appealing, never hollow or tired, and knows how to make a hero out of Porgy.
Elizabeth Graham is powerful in her weakness as Bess. She is a swamp butterfly, tender, gentle, but capricious and unreliable. Death is her true friend, and like Isolda she needs it in order to thrive in her depravity. A sadness of the soul afflicts her. A butterfly not made for the sun, she will fade beautifully away in the dark. No one can help Porgy, he is master of his own destruction. Gershwin, with almost demented courage at his age, has made of him a genuine operatic hero without a trace of Call me madam.
"I'm on my way" can tear the heart -- his way is the Big Apple with its deadly beauty. Tears for Porgy because he's going nowhere.
