Why is "Porgy and Bess" a classic? Lyric Opera of Chicago has the answer.

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If your only exposure to George Gershwin and DuBose Heyward's 1935 opera "Porgy and Bess" has been the tour of the cut down "Broadway" version that played the Muny this past summer or even the interesting but flawed Union Avenue Opera/Black Rep co-production from 2007, you'd probably be justified in wondering why this is considered a great American opera. The current Lyric Opera of Chicago revival of its 2008 production—which runs through December 20—demonstrates why.

With masterful stage direction by Francesca Zambello (based on her original staging at Washington National Opera) and insightful musical direction by former St. Louis Symphony resident conductor Ward Stare, this is the "Porgy and Bess" that will remind you what all the fuss is about. This was especially apparent for me in the first act (consisting of Gershwin’s Act I and first two scenes of Act II), which has some of the most emotionally powerful moments in the opera. “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” was particularly poignant.

The cast is solid, with great (if sometimes under-powered) singing and utterly convincing acting. Baritone Eric Owens leads the way as a fully realized and credible Porgy. As originally written, the character can some across as a bit one-dimensional and simple, but there was none of that here. The role sometimes goes low for a baritone, but Mr. Owens still has plenty of power in the bottom of his range.

Soprano Adina Aaron’s Bess also avoids cliché, emphasizing instead the character’s vulnerability and the terrible threat posed by her addiction to Sportin’ Life’s “happy dust.” There’s not a lot a sexual chemistry between the two, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing, as it suggests there may be a purity to her relationship with Porgy that is impossible with the brutish Crown.

Speaking of whom, baritone Eric Greene makes Crown the appalling force of nature he should be. This is a character who is all Freudian “id”—unchecked desire with no sense of control. We got all that from Mr. Greene and a powerful voice as well.

Tenor Jermaine Smith has almost made a career out of the role of the amoral drug dealer Sportin’ Life. He played the role in Lyric Opera’s 2008 production as well as in the Union Avenue production I mentioned earlier. Reviewing him back then, I praised his clear, flexible voice and dance moves that remind me that the role was, from the beginning, a kind of homage to the vaudeville stage. It’s still true.

There are many other outstanding performances here, such as soprano Karen Slack’s Serena (her “My Man’s Gone Now” was heard-rending), soprano Hlengiwe Mkhwanazi as the doomed Clara, and contralto Gwendolyn Brown’s take-no-prisoners Maria. Baritone Norman Garrett also makes a strong impression as the equally doomed Jake. In fact, there’s really not a single performance here that isn’t at least good, and many clearly qualify as great.

The chorus figures prominently in “Porgy and Bess,” but Chorus Master Michael Black’s singers are more than up to the challenge. Gershwin makes it an important character in its own right, often commenting on and participating in the action. Many scenes feature virtuoso writing for chorus members, a classic example being the Act II "storm" sequence in which six completely independent vocal lines slowly merge with the chorus to produce the spiritual "Oh, de Lawd shake the Heavens". It’s a powerful moment, powerfully delivered.

Peter J. Davison’s unit set makes the scene changes quick and fluid. Combined with Mark McCullough’s atmospheric lighting, it makes Catfish Row look rather like a decaying and abandoned prison, all rusted sheet metal and institutional ugliness, but I think that neatly makes the point that the residents are effectively imprisoned by their poverty and by the brutality of the racist power structure represented so effectively by the police and other representatives of law enforcement in Heyward’s libretto. In Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess,” the moment a white character opens his mouth, the music stops dead. You couldn’t ask for a more stark illustration of the racial divide.

Movement and choreography are important to “Porgy and Bess” a well. Assistant director and choreographer Denni Sayers makes the dance numbers seem to emerge naturally from the rest of the stage movement, making it an integral part of the characters. In both musical theatre and opera, dance numbers can sometimes feel like (and, indeed, are often intended to be) separate set pieces, divorced from the action. Not so here.

Praise is also due to costume designer Paul Tazewell. His earthy palette nicely matches that of Mr. Davison and helps give the show a unified look.

Ward Stare conducts the orchestra with assurance and if his tempi are sometimes a bit brisk, they’re clearly not a problem for either his musicians or his singers. Mr. Stare, as I noted some years ago, is clearly a man whose star is on the ascendant. This show will certainly be another feather in his cap.

I won’t say this is a perfect “Porgy and Bess,” but it’s so close that it probably doesn’t matter. This is a difficult piece to pull off at all and opportunities to see it done this well can be rare. It continues through December 20th in the company's opulent space in the Chicago Loop and is well worth a trip to the Windy City.

Final note: I’m not a hotel critic, but if you do make the trip up here, seriously consider the place where we stayed, the Kimpton Allegro. It’s a cool little boutique hotel and only three blocks from the opera house. The adjoining 312 Chicago restaurant is worthwhile as well.

It ain't necessarily Gershwin

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

What: The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess
When: July 7 – 13, 2014
Where: The Muny, St. Louis

The main thing you need to know about “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is that it's not really the Gershwins' “Porgy and Bess.” Permit me to explain.

“Porgy and Bess” is a 1935 opera with music by George Gershwin, lyrics by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, and libretto by Heyward, based on an earlier stage adaptation of his 1925 novel “Porgy” about the tragic love triangle linking the crippled beggar Porgy, the brutish stevedore Crown, and the worldly but not very wise Bess. “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is a 2011 musical theatre adaptation of the opera conceived and directed by Diane Paulus with a radically simplified version of Gershwin's score by Diedre Murray and a rewritten book by Susan-Lori Parks that deletes some characters and subplots but leaves the core story intact.

Nathaniel Stampley as Porgy
Photo: Michael J. Lutch

“Porgy and Bess” is a full-scale opera, sung through with a minimum of spoken dialog. Cast in three acts but usually performed in two, it runs over three and one-half hours with intermission. “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is a standard musical, with most of the original narrative music replaced with speech. It runs just over two and one-half hours. “Porgy and Bess” has (depending on how its staged) only one or two real dance production numbers and not many built-in applause breaks. “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” has plenty of both, repeatedly bringing the drama to a halt while the cast poses and the audience claps on cue.

The result is a work that, compared to the original, feels somewhat downsized and diminished. Ms. Murray's musical edits are at best pointless and at worst pernicious, altering Gershwin's original melodies and rhythms in what seem to me to be arbitrary and unnecessary ways.   All of the best-known songs are still there—"Bess, You Is My Woman Now," "A Woman is a Sometime Thing," "I Got Plenty of Nothing," and "It Ain't Necessarily So," among others—but none of them has escaped some tinkering.  Some of the composer's most innovative ideas, like the orchestral fugue that accompanies the fight in which Crown murders Robbins, have been edited out of existence or, like the vivid musical depiction of the gathering storm in the second act, drowned out by stage business and sound effects.

Denisha Ballew as Serena, Alicia Hall Moran as Bess,
Kingsley Leggs as Sportin' Life
Photo: Michael J. Lutch

William David Brohn and Christopher Jahnke's arrangements don't help, replacing Gershwin's inventive orchestration with a generic contemporary keyboard-heavy sound. In addition, the brevity of the individual songs and frequent applause cues kills some of the dramatic momentum that the original creates with its continuous flow of melody.

That's not to say that all of the changes are negative. In Heyward's libretto the residents of Catfish Row often come across as naïve and even simple minded. Ms. Parks has given them a wisdom and dignity that makes them more three-dimensional without substantially changing the story. Some revisions—such as making Bess more actively involved in her own downfall, making Porgy less crippled, or turning Porgy's killing of Crown into an elaborate piece of stage combat involving the entire community—strike me as more questionable, but in general Ms. Parks's contributions add far more than they subtract.

The result is a work that, while dramatically as good as (and sometimes better than) the original, is far less musically interesting. I don't think it serves George Gershwin very well.

That's the bad news. The good news is that this touring company is a strong one, with terrific voices and a fine ensemble of actors—something that, to be fair, you don't always get in the opera world. Better yet, most of the principals have some operatic background, so in some ways this cast combines the best of both worlds. It's a large company—26 members—so I'll confine myself to the leads and supporting performers.

Alvin Crawford as Crown
Photo: Michale J. Lutch

Nathaniel Stampley anchors the ensemble as a dynamic and strong-willed Porgy. Alicia Hall Moran's Bess has all the self-possessed sexuality the role needs, coupled with a strong undercurrent of sadness that makes her tragic downfall credible. Alvin Crawford is a swaggering and arrogant Crown and David Hughey is a warm and loving presence as the doomed Jake, whose desire to create a better life for his child leads to his death in that second act hurricane.

As Serena, Denisha Ballew sings a hair-raising “My Man's Gone Now” while Sumayya Ali's Clara makes a strong first impression in “Summertime.” I don't think it makes sense to turn it into a duet with Jake, but that's a separate issue. Danielle Lee Graves completes the trio of strong supporting women as Mariah, Catfish Row's unofficial spokeswoman and wise elder.

Kingsley Leggs's Sportin' Life is less flamboyant and more physically restrained than is usually the case with this role, which was originally conceived with Cab Calloway in mind and first performed by vaudeville veteran John Bubbles. It's obviously a directorial rather than an acting decision and does result in making the character less comical and more credibly seductive.

Speaking of direction, Ms. Paulus's downsizing might not be to my taste, but her blocking and pacing are first rate. The sets by Riccardo Hernandez replace the original realistic and oppressive tenement block with simple flats painted to suggest doors and windows. That has the advantage of allowing fast scene changes, although it's not always entirely clear where some scenes are taking place unless you already know the story well.

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

The bottom line is that “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” is a leaner, more streamlined, and unquestionably non-operatic treatment of a work that's generally regarded as Gershwin's magnum opus. If you've never seen the original or you have and can essentially treat this as an entirely different work, I'd say it's worth seeing. Calling it “The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess,” though, strikes me as dishonest, as though the creators wanted the cachet of the Gershwin name without the musical substance that goes along with it. Maybe they should just call it “Porgy and Bess: the Musical.”

“The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess” runs through Sunday, July 13, on the Muny's outdoor Stage in Forest Park. The show begins at 8:15 nightly. For more information: muny.com.

This originally appeared at 88.1 KDHX, where Chuck Lavazzi is the senior performing arts critic.

Muny Preview: Whose 'Porgy' is it, anyway?

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

Although George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" is now widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of 20th century opera, it took (to quote one of the opera's lyrics) "a long pull to get there".

With a book by DuBose Heyward (based on his own original novel and play) and music and lyrics by the Brothers Gershwin, the original 1935 Theatre Guild production was a financial failure, and critical reaction was mixed and, from a contemporary standpoint, clueless. New York Times drama critic Brooks Atkinson dismissed it out of hand, and the paper's music critic, Olin Downes, found the mix of vernacular musical elements and sophisticated symphonic form completely baffling (a position which he would later recant).

Despite revivals of interest in the 1940s and 1950s, Porgy and Bess remained an essentially marginal work until a 1976 production of the complete score by the Houston Grand Opera (which played the Muny in 1977)—one that restored nearly an hour of music that had been cut from earlier productions—demonstrated conclusively that Gershwin's crowning achievement was also a great work of musical art. "Seen alongside the humanity in the music and text of Porgy and Bess", wrote Leighton Kerner in 1989, "other American operas seem slight".

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

That said, the piece is still a major challenge for any opera company. The cast is large, the music complex, and the demands of the staging can be daunting. Low voices—bass/baritones and baritones—dominate the leading male roles, making projection a potential issue, as does Gershwin's penchant for polyphonic choral writing. Add in the fact that the opera runs, in its original uncut version, over three and one-half hours with intermission (closer to four if you do it in three acts), and you have a project guaranteed to give any producer nightmares.

Some have dealt with the opera's challenges by simply re-writing it. Before the Houston production reclaimed "Porgy" for the operatic world, it was routinely sliced and diced in ways that made it look more like a conventional Broadway musical—usually by replacing Gershwin's recitatives with spoken dialog and cutting scenes and characters. The co-production by Union Avenue Opera and the Black Rep back in 2007, for example, used an edited version, although they did at least retains some of Gershwin's more innovative ideas, most notably the Act II "storm" sequence in which six completely independent vocal lines slowly merge with the chorus to produce the spiritual "Oh, de Lawd shake the Heavens".

Photo: Michael J. Lutch

The "Porgy and Bess" at the Muny this week is not a local production but rather a national tour of a musical titled "The Gershwin's Porgy and Bess" that was originally directed by Diane Paulus for the American Repertory Theatre and then moved to Broadway in 2011. "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" takes revision "one step beyond," with wholesale re-writes of Hayward's libretto by playwright Susan-Lori Parks and similar radical surgery on Gershwin's music by cellist/composer Deidre Murray. New scenes have been added, including backstories for the characters that were not part of the original work. All of which means that, although prepared with the cooperation of the Gershwin and Hayward estates, "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess," might (as Stephen Sondheim observed in a caustic letter to the New York Times) more accurately be called "Diane Paulus's Porgy and Bess."

Will it work? I haven't seen it yet, so your guess is as good as mine. The New York premiere certainly stirred up some strong feelings, both pro and con. Writing in the New Yorker, for example, Hilton Als defended the revisions as "politically radical and dramaturgically original" and suggested that Mr. Sondheim was just being racially insensitive. "[T]he stories he tells involve white characters", wrote Mr. Als, "and his professional world is a white one." Ben Brantley, in his New York Times review, struck something of a middle ground, praising Audra McDonald's Bess more than the show itself. "Ms. McDonald's Bess," he wrote, "is — in a word — great; the show in which she appears is, at best, just pretty good."

The only way to know who's right, of course, is to see the show yourself. "The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" is certainly shorter than the original opera (which hasn't been seen on the Muny stage since 1988), clocking in at around two and one-half hours, so if you go you'll be on your way home before 11 PM. Performances begin at 8:15 PM through Sunday, July 13, on the outdoor stage in Forest Park. For more information: muny.com.