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GERSHWIN PORGY & BESS COMPLETE LEONTYNE PRICE WILLIAM WARFIELD LIVE RECORDING - TITANIA PALAST, BERLIN 21 SEPTEMBER 1952 CD 1 Summertime A woman is a sometime thing Oh, little stars; Touch that money an’ meet yo’ Gawd Oh, I got plenty o’nuttin I stayin’ with Porgy Oh, I can’t sit down CD 2 I ain’ got no shame It ain’t necessarily so Porgy, Porgy, dat you there A red-headed woman Clara, Clara, don’t you be downhearted Oh, Bess, oh where’s my Bess

Contents:

As George Gershwin celebrated his thirtieth birthday in 1928, he was at the height of his early maturity.\It must have seemed to such a self-confident artist as he that there was nothing he could not achieve if he so wished. However, Gershwin at the age of thirty had not yet written his masterpiece, although he had had ideas for setting an operatic libretto to be fashioned from Du Bose Hayward's novel Porgy for some years, ever since he began reading it one night, unable to sleep, and – gripped by the telling – stayed awake until daybreak before he had finished it. Several factors conspired to delay the realisation of his dream. The musical theatre continued to beckon: in 1929, he wrote two Broadway shows – the first was Show Girl, a somewhat hastily put together vehicle which utilised An American in Paris as a ballet. This admixture did not work too well, and the second show was the revised version of Strike Up The Band, which opened early in January 1930, six months after Show Girl and over two years after the first version.

Another factor was the important social change brought about by the arrival of talking pictures in the late 1920, the immense success of which made silent movies redundant, almost literally overnight. Speech and music could be added to film, making it a brilliant new medium for composers, but thousands of musicians who had been engaged to accompany silent pictures in movie-houses were thrown out of work.

As one of the leading popular composers Gershwin was soon in demand by film companies. In 1929, he signed a contrast with Fox Film Corporation, and a few weeks after the opening of Girl Crazy, in November 1930, the Gershwin brothers arrived in Hollywood, and spent some months writing the score for a film eventually entitled Delicious, for which Gershwin composed a relatively lengthy orchestral sequence. Some of this music was cut from the finished film, and Gershwin determined to fashion the discarded music- along with much of that which was used – into a separate concert work.  This became the Second Rhapsody for piano and orchestra. 

In the Second Rhapsody, the relationship between solo piano and orchestra is handled with greater assurance than in the Concerto in F, and with infinitely greater resource than in Rhapsody in Blue. The orchestration is original, confident and powerful; the thematic material is much more conherent than in almost anything he had attempted earlier, and there is the typical Gershwin sense of elation and self-confidence in the music, the relative failure of which at its first performances must have been a bitter pill for the composer to swallow. The premiere of the Second Rhapsody took place in Boston in January, 1932; thirty-five days earlier, a new musical show by the Gershwins, of fine quality, opened on Broadway: Of Thee I Sing.  This was to enjoy the longest run of any Gershwin show and became the first work of its type awarded a Pulitzer Prize.

Following his exertions on Of Thee I Sing, he took a break from composition early in 1932 with a holiday in Cuba. The 'break' proved to be another source for musical inspiration: within a few days of his arrival, he had begun sketching a short orchestral work, based on the indigenous music of Cuba..  The music – eventually entitled Cuban Overture – was completed by the end of July. The first performance was in New York in August, conducted by Albert Coates, but as with the Second Rhapsody,it failed to make the instantaneous impact of the public's imagination as his earlier concert works had done, yet Gershwin must have known that with them he had written two of his finest symphonic scores. These relative failures may well have prompted his decision to take more lessons in composition, choosing Joseph Schillinger – an expatriate Russian, who had emigrated to the USA in 1928 – as his teacher.  Schillinger was three years Gershwin's senior, and there should be little doubt that the advance in compositional technique which Porgy and Bess exhibits owes something to the Schillinger lessons. But theory is one thing: inspiration, which Gershwin possessed in abundance, is another.

Although the Metropolitan Opera in New York had commissioned an opera from Gershwin in 1929, to be delivered at an unspecified future date, Gershwin knew that his long-dreamed-of ambition to turn Porgy into an opera would go against the spirit of the Metropolitan contract, which was predicated upon Gershwin undertaking an operatic treatment of the Dybbuk, or some other essentially Jewish theme. Gershwin was anxious that the Porgy opera should reach a wider audience, and it would need a virtually all-black cast, which would prove difficult for major opera houses. In the event, the contract for Porgy and Bess was signed with the Theatre Guild in October, 1933.

Once Gershwin began work on the opera, it consumed him utterly. It was a remarkable outpouring, over a period of about eighteen months at most, from around August 1933 (although composition in earnest was not begun until the following February), until April 1935, and the resultant score would have taken around four hours in performance. The opera has never been performed complete as Gershwin originally wrote it. Nevertheless, as finally staged and published it remains a full-length grand opera of more than three hours' duration.

A great work of art – which Porgy and Bess is – will set its own parameters, and, from the opening of the work, and attentive audience will sense those which inform this opera throughout. Set in a black tenement in Charleston, South Carolina, the first scene sets the teeming activity. It is full of continuous movement, almost as a film-camera might take in a panoramic view before zooming in on various cells of action, one after another, before panning back to view the overall scene. There is something almost cinematic in this opening scene, and Gershwin's music complements it brilliantly: incessant, joyous, quick and alert, it is many things, one after another, reflecting vibrant tenement life before easing its way down to the langorous pulse of the first aria, Summertine. As a totality, Porgy and Bess poses immense challenges to an opera company, but ultimately it is a complete work of art, and it is through its unique combination of music and drama that it speaks to us, the most complete and impressive example of Gershwin's genius.

In terms of locale and of atmosphere, Porgy and Bess is completely consistent and convincing. In terms of musical originality, it is equally so. It is, in fact, grand opera, by which is meant continuous music, without speech almost from first bar to last (apart from, very significantly, the two white characters – policemen). Gershwin knew exactly what he was doing, his inherent self-confidence and fifteen years' experience as a Broadway and film composer having trained him comprehensively in compositional stagecraft. He was wholly immersed in the essential features of his task; it was against such a deep and thorough preparatory background that Porgy and Bess was composed.

Described as 'An American Folk Opera' – which it undoubtedly is – and breaking entirely new ground for the composer, it is only to be expected that not a few people were perplexed by it. Porgy and Bess was not the first time an opera had called for an all-black cast: Delius's Koanga of ????, Scott Joplin's Treemonisha of 1911 – ignored for sixty years – Gershwin's own earlier one-act Blue Monday of 1922 and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts from 1934 (presented by the Negro Theater of Harlem), for examples, also call for virtually all-black casts. The first production of Porgy and Bess – given the unusual, not to say unique, way of presenting what was, after all,  grand opera, was a major success. The production was first seen on September 30 1935 at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, prior to opening in New York. A week previously, a concert version of what was claimed to be the complete score was given in Carnegie Hall, New York City, before an invited audience.

The first night in Boston was a triumph, as was that two weeks later at the New York premiere, which took place at the Alvin Theatre, 250 West 52^nd Street. The opera was directed by Rouben Mamoulian, one of the most significant of the younger generation of American directors. A stage photograph, showing Gershwin taking a curtain call on the opening night with several members of the cast and Mamoulian, is dominated by the composer, centre front: the expression of elation on his face, a combination of triumph and exhaustion, is unique in photographs of him. From this one shot, it is not too fanciful to see clearly that he knew he had not only succeeded in his task, but also that the music had won the hearts and minds of his audience. An operatic composer can wish for no more than that.

Although it is clear that that first production was what Gershwin intended, in some respects it was not initially a success. By 1942, when Porgy and Bess was revived on Broadway, Gershwin was dead, and never lived to see the opera enjoy the longest run up to that time of any musical revival – and to be acclaimed by the New York Music Critics' Circle.

Curiously, the European premiere took place in March 1943 in Copenhagen, during the wartime German occupation of Denmark, by the Danish Royal Opera (in Danish). In 1952, when the first virtually complete recording of the work was made for American Columbia (CBS), produced by Goddard Lieberson, the US State Department subvented a world tour of Porgy and Bess, which lasted over three years, and which brought the opera to many countries, including Britain, Italy (it was given at La Scala – the first American opera performed there), South Africa and countries in South America.  It was this world tour that first alerted audiences to the mastery and vocal beauty of soprano Leontyne Price, and this recording comes from a broadcast by the company in Berlin in 1954 {Please check year}
 

Synopsis

 As mentioned earlier, the opera takes place in Catfish Row, in the Negro quarter of Charleston, South Carolina (the original states 'at the present time', but that ought perhaps more properly be amended to 'the recent past'). 

Act I

A crap game is under way, during which Clara sings a lullaby, 'Summertime', to her baby daughter. The game turns ugly and a quarrel ensues between Crown and Robbins: during their fight, Crown kills him, and manages to escape. The drug dealer, Sportin' Life, who has always fancied Crown's girl-friend, Bess, seizes the chance to invite her to go with him to New York, but the cripple Porgy has offered her refuge in his home, which she accepts, aware that Porgy, a kind-hearted and selfless man, has long been in love with her himself.

Robbins's wife Serena, suddenly widowed, is holding a wake for her late husband, and there is a collection for Robbins's burial. Serena sings the haunting yet passionate lament, 'My Man's Gone Now'.

Act II

Settled in Catfish Row, Bess is living openly with Porgy, a life free from the uncertainties and brutality of her time with Crown. Porgy is happy and settled ('I Got Plenty O Nuttin'') and the great love duet – 'Bess You Is My Woman Now' – personifies their union. The scene changes to Kittiwah Island, during a picnic excursion for many residents of Catfish Row. Sportin' Life sings of his somewhat cynical view of religion 'It Ain't Necessarily So', but later Crown – who has been hiding on the island – suddenly appears to Bess, and persuades her to leave Porgy and go back to him.

Some days later, back in Catfish Row, Bess – suffering from a fever - returns to Porgy. Solicitous as   always, he tends her and nurses her back to health. Suddenly, a violent storm rages, and the women

of Catfish Row sing of their fears for their menfolk, who have gone fishing. Clara is especially concerned, having had a premonition that something bad will befall her husband Jake. But there is no-one in Catfish Row who can save him except Crown, who suddenly appears and offers to help his one-time friend, at the same time as ridiculing Porgy who is unable to help.

Act III

Crown returns after successfully saving Jake. He is looking for Bess, but Porgy, incensed at Crown's return and his insults, loses his temper and fatally stabs Crown. The police arrive, but their enquiries go nowhere – although they suspect Porgy, whom they arrest and take into custody. Seeing that Porgy is away, Sportin' Life again approaches Bess and finally persuades her – after giving her some drugs - to go with him to New York.

As no evidence can be found to hold Porgy any longer, the police release him a few days later. But Bess has gone, and Porgy, heartbroken at this turn of events, determines to follow them to New York and bring her back. The opera ends with Porgy setting out on his quest.
 © Robert Matthew-Walker

Page Created Monday March 17th 2008