Lyric Opera of Chicago: Porgy and Bess
Watching a full-fledged production of Porgy and Bess feels like a very special thing. The Lyric Opera of Chicago said they’ve tried to put one together year after year after year and could never get everything to work out right.
But now, they have a gorgeous run going. Five of the remaining eleven performances are sold out. The newly added December 16 show has the widest range of tickets available.
I was lucky enough to see it last Friday. For me, it was a very uneven experience. Overall, you could tell that this isn’t a traditional opera (as in a classic Mozart or Rossini one). It has many of the same elements, but they are just different enough for you to know that this is of a more modern school.
This isn’t to say that a different presentation is bad, but some of the choices did affect my overall enjoyment of it.
In a more traditional opera, a character’s entry song is very important. It’s what you hear when you first encounter the person and that sets the stage for your feelings about him/her. Two of the most famous entry songs are for Figaro in The Barber of Seville and for Musetta in La Boheme.
Rather than introducing characters in this manner, Porgy and Bess starts off with an extended mood and atmosphere setting sequence. We’ll meet all the main characters, but they are mixed in with all the other inhabitants of Catfish Row.
This was not fun for me.
I understand why they created this structure, but it made the beginning twenty to thirty minutes very dull. It is a world of poverty and desperation. The music doesn’t do much changing within this setting. The pacing of every phrase in every song by every character seemed to be the same.
As I sat there in a bit of confusion, I started to dread the next three hours.
Luckily, the opera doesn’t stay in this mode. After this beginning, the characters started getting their dues. All in a row, there came some great character arias that I couldn’t help but wish were mixed in at the beginning. Storywise, the opera began to portray that there is life and joy with this harsh environment.
The songs did start to sound a bit more traditional too. When Bess was singing about her need to sacrifice her personal happiness for the good of everyone, she could have been any number of operatic heroines out there. For me though, after this pick-up, the show started to go down again.
This time, my main issue was with the inconsistency of the musical style. I think this is a taste issue and is probably more about my preferences than anything tangible in the score. I found the jumps between a more traditional operatic sound and a more modern jazz presentation to be jarring and unpalatable.
Still, the overall strength and rarity of the production are plenty to recommend it. The cast is great, especially Jonita Lattimore as Serena. Morenike Fadayomi’s Bess is annoying sometimes with her failing arms and stamping feet, but when she can stand still and sing, it is a lovely moment.