Class 5: "Opera on Broadway"

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5. Opera on Broadway. In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein wrote a new scenario and lyrics to adapt Bizet’s 1875 opera Carmen as a Broadway musical, Carmen Jones. It was later made into a movie by Otto Preminger, starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. How does study of this genre-switch illuminate the differences between musical theater and opera? Can it help us understand the hybrid nature of George Gershwin’s 1935 "folk opera" Porgy and Bess, which has inhabited both worlds but not been entirely comfortable in either?

Porgy began as a novel by DuBose Heyward published in 1925. The next year, he and his wife Dorothy made it into a successful Broadway play. Gershwin had approached DuBose Heyward about a collaboration earlier, but it was not until 1934 that they began work. Although the publishers currently require that the show be advertised as The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess, implying a collaboration between George and his brother Ira similar to that in shows like Lady Be Good, most of the lyrics were actually written by Heyward. Ira's contributions tend to be the Broadway-style numbers that rely on wit rather than plot development; the resultant clash of styles is one of the reasons why Porgy is so difficult to pigeonhole. rb.

The script, videos, and images will be posted immediately after class.

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Q AND A

What is the most important difference between Broadway and Opera?
Of all the things I mentioned, the point I would leave you with is that in musical theater the words are the most important; the singer may play with rhythm, pitch, and color to bring out their meaning, even at the expense of pure music. In opera, though, the music is more important, and the sung numbers—as opposed to any connecting tissue (recitative)— are delivered in as rich and resonant manner as possible.

Is it only on Broadway that you find interpolated numbers?
No. I should have pointed out that the first number I played, the Gypsy Dance from Carmen, is also inserted for no reason other than to provide a fun dance and some local color. Although it serves a point in the plot, the Quintet is also something of the same kind. But on the Broadway stage before around 1970, this is par for the course, as you saw with the production of Anything Goes last week, which includes several numbers originally written for quite different shows. Instead of "interpolated numbers," though, it might be more accurate to say "exportable ones." Older composers would write songs to have a more or less specific function in the show, but also to work generically as Tin Pan Alley standards in the aftermarket. The three numbers from Porgy and Bess we heard today where this is true are "Summertime," "A woman is a sometime thing," and "It ain't necessarily so"; there are several others.

Does it matter if Porgy and Bess is an opera or a musical?
For most people, no; it is what it is—and if you like it, you like it. But this question has given the piece an unusually fraught production history over the ages. I omitted to make enough of the point that several of the productions from 1935 to the present were essentially different shows, with different dialogues, different orchestrations, different assignment of songs to characters, even significant plot differences—all depending on which audience they were intended to serve. There is a vey full treatment of the history on Wikipedia; it is worth reading.

What racial controversies surround the work?
I mentioned the attitude of many Black performers towards the work: glad of the gig, but uncomfortable with the stereotyping. But this was a difficult subject to broach in the time available; again, there is a much fuller treatment on Wikipedia. To be fair, the requirement that the roles be played exclusively by Black actors was probably originally a way to avoid stereoptyping. The age of blackface minstrels was not far enough in the past, and the authors wanted to avoid that at all costs; these people were real. And some sort of vernacular was inevitable; the characters would sound very odd speaking in a register not their own. If this were a story being remade every few decades as a film, you would assume that the words would change slightly to what seemed most comfortable each time. But when they are set to music, their rhythm and syntax becomes a permanent part of the score and can't be changed. Pehaps the simplest approach is to do what I think someone suggested: to treat them as though they were an opera text in a foreign language such as French or Italian?

What is the implication of the title The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess?
Apparently, this is now a contractual requirement; it is not clear when and why it became so. But it implies that George Gershwin wrote all the music (which he did) and his brother Ira wrote all the words (which he didn't). There are about two dozen separate numbers in the work, but Ira wrote only five ("Bess, you is my woman now" and "It ain't necessarily so," plus three others). The rest were by DuBose Heyward, who also wrote the book. But the Heyward estate seems to have agreed to the required title change, so who am I to complain?

VIDEO LINKS

All the clips in the first hour are available on YouTube at the links below. I have added a documentary on the Diane Paulus production of Porgy and Bess and Stephen Sondheim's complaints about it, plus a couple of other items. Clips not played in class are *asterisked*.

The complete Porgy and Bess from the San Francisco Opera that we sampled in class, however, is represented only by a fairly substantial tailer. To give more of a sense of how Porgy plays on an opera stage, I have included a trailer plus several scenes from the Met 2021 production. rb.

A. WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?
	Carmen	* Habañera (Marilyn Horne, in concert) * Danse bohémienne (Elena Maximova, Taormina) * Quintet (Metropolitan Opera)
	Carmen Jones	* Habañera (Dorothy Dandridge, Preminger movie) * Beat out dat rhythm on a drum (Pearl Bailey, Preminger movie) * Quintet (Old Vic, 1991)

B. PORGY THE MUSICAL
	Performance clips	* A woman is a sometime thing (Joshua Henry) * Bess, you is my woman now (Norm Lewis & Audra McDonald, live) * Highlights 1 * Highlights 2 (middle section shown in class)
	About the show	* PBS documentary * Stephen Sondheim takes issue

C. PORGY THE OPERA
	San Francisco, 2009	* Trailer (touches most scenes we saw)
	Metropolitan Opera, 2021	* Trailer * Summertime (Golda Schultz) * I got plenty o' nuttin' (Eric Owens) * Bess, you is my woman now (ending; Angel Blue & Owens) * It ain't necessarily so (Frederick Ballentine)
	Trevor Nunn film, 1989	* Bess, you is my woman now (Willard White, Cynthia Heymon) * Ending scene


IMAGES
The thumbnails below cover the slides shown in class, though there may be a few small discrepancies. Click the thumbnail to see a larger image. Click on the right or left of the larger picture to go forward or back, or outside it to close.

Here are brief bios of the artists, composers, and writers considered in the class, listed in order of birth.

	Georges Bizet, 1838–75. French composer. Bizet's fame rests largely on his final opera, Carmen (1875), although it was not a success at its first performance. Its immense poshumous success has led to reconsideration of many of the composer's earlier works, such as his youthful Symphony in C (1855) and opera The Pearl Fishers (1863).
	DuBose Heyward, 1885–1940. American writer. Heyward is best known for his 1925 novel Porgy, set among the African American community in his home town of Charleston. He worked with his sister Dorothy to adapt the book as a successful Broadway play, and then with composer George Gershwin to turn it into the opera Porgy and Bess (1935). He also wrote most of the lyrics for the opera, although the credit tends to go, mostly inappropriately, to Ira Gershwin.
	Oscar Hammerstein II, 1895–1960. American lyricist. Oscar Hammerstein's father, a German immigrant, was manager of the Metropolitan Opera and active also on Broadway. His son quickly established a career as lyricist, working with Rudolf Friml, Sigmund Romberg, Jerome Kern (Show Boat, 1926), and a very long partnership with Richard Rodgers from Oklahoma! (1943) to The Sound of Music (1959).
	Ira Gershwin, 1896–1983. American lyricist. Ira (Israel) Gershwin is remembered as the lyricist of most of the shows and independent songs of his younger brother George, but he also wrote for Jerome Kern, Kurt Weill, and several other composers. His numbers like as "I Got Rhythm", "Embraceable You", and "Someone to Watch Over Me" have become standards, and his also contributed some of the wittiest lyric to his bother's opera Porgy and Bess.
	George Gershwin, 1898–1937. American composer. Born Jacob Gershwine in New York to Jewish emigrants from Eastern Europe, he studied piano and composition, but soon found his vocation as a songwriter, mostly with his elder brother Ira (born 1896). Most of his songs have become crossover standards, as have his orchestral works Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928). Most of his stage works are primarily containers for his songs, but his 1935 opera Porgy and Bess is an exception, a closely-developed study of African-American life.