A Grand Night Out

Porgy and Bess; Ella Fitzgerald, vocal; Louis Armstrong; trumpet and vocal

I have an LP recording of the Houston Grand Opera when they staged George Gershwin’s and DuBose Heyward’s “Porgy and Bess” in 1976. The composer and librettist had conceived the work as an “American folk opera”, and saw its premier in New York in 1935, featuring a classically trained, all African-American cast. As you can imagine, this was very daring for its time. For reasons unknown, certain portions of the opera got cut.

When the Houston Grand Opera mounted a brand new production of “Porgy and Bess”, presented in its entirety as part of the United States’ bicentennial, Gershwin and Heyward’s operatic masterwork received, for the first time, the acceptance and respect it so richly deserves as a legitimate opera. The HGO took its production to Broadway and received the very first Tony Award for “Best Revival”, although, at the time, the award was called “Most Innovative Production of a Revival". It was also the first time that an opera had received a Tony Award. The cast recording of this production won a Grammy award in 1977.

During the summer of 1987, I worked at the Grand Lake Lodge near the west entrance of “Rocky Mountain National Park” in Colorado. I tried to make the entire experience as rustic as possible. And I met my endeavor with a certain measure of success. However, when I saw in the Denver Post that the Houston Grand Opera was bringing its production of “Porgy and Bess” to “The Mile High City”, the option “not to go” never presented itself.My friend J. and I borrowed a colleague’s car, traveled the one hundred miles to Denver and got near front row balcony seats for this once in a lifetime performance.

Who am I, as a junior in college, to say that any one performance, of anything, really, is superior to any other? Nobody, is the answer to that query. However, I believe that all of us can detect greatness when it stands within our various vicinities. Greatness took its place on the stage fifty to seventy-five feet before my balcony seat.

At the close of the intermission following the second act, a voice over the intercom announced that the artist who had been singing the role of Porgy had become suddenly “indisposed”. The singer who had been playing the part of “Sportin’ Life” would continue the role of Porgy to the end of the show.

I have heard this truism, that if a performer, in this case, a singer, has a secondary role in a production or a performance, regardless of level of talent or musicianship, he or she will “stand aside” and let the “star” take up most of the performing space on the stage. The man who sang the role of “Sportin’ Life” during the first two acts of the opera relied mostly on his sense of musical style to bring his character to life. But, let me tell you, when he burst onto the stage as “Porgy”, it was every baritone for himself. In the first ten seconds of his entrance in his new role, he received a major, major ovation from his audience. I will never forget it.

A full twenty years before the “powers what be” on the Houston Grand Opera board even considered taking a run at “Porgy and Bess”, ol’ Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong and Miss Ella Fitzgerald took on the roles of Mr. Porgy and Miss Bess, and many other characters from the opera as well. And while the original score hinted at the jazz and the blues, this recording came forth with full disclosure concerning jazz and the blues. It, in fact, swings us all to death.

In 2001, Fitzgerald and Armstrong’s “Porgy and Bess” was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that have “qualitative or historical significance”.

I ask you, who can stay awake if you’re being sung to with these words?

Summertime and the livin’ is easy

Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high

Your daddy’s rich, and your ma is good lookin’

So hush, little baby, don’t you cry.

__________

One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singin'

You’re gonna spread your wings and you’ll take to the sky

But till that mornin’, there’s a’nothin’ can harm you

With your daddy and mammy standing by.

Credits: To the Houston Grand Opera. Good show! Bravo.

This is the tenth of my final forty-five CD's.