University of Michigan News
Feb. 9, 2018
ANN
ARBOR—"Porgy and Bess" has been called the first great American opera,
made all the more significant by being set in a black American community
and performed by black artists in 1935, a time when black culture was
exoticized by the country's white majority.
Over
the following 80 years, it became one of the most celebrated American
works of the 20th century, while simultaneously igniting controversy
every time it was performed due to its themes, characterizations and
appropriative nature—an opera about black Americans created by white
artists.
Despite
its fame and undisputed place in American music history, "Porgy and
Bess" has never had a definitive score. Over the last three years,
editors at the University of Michigan's Gershwin Initiative have been
hard at work righting this wrong, creating a new edition of the opera.
And
now, Ann Arbor audiences will have the chance to experience a crucial
step of the editorial process. A test performance of the new score will
take place at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 17 at Hill Auditorium.
Through
a partnership with the University Musical Society, led by Kenneth
Kiesler and featuring critically acclaimed professional soloists, "The
Gershwins' Porgy and Bess" will be performed by the University Symphony
Orchestra, U-M School of Music, Theatre & Dance choruses, and
members of Emeritus Professor Willis Patterson's Our Own Thing Chorale.
The
concert will provide audience members and performers alike the chance
to experience the newly edited score, which restores material often cut
in past productions. The score now includes an onstage band in Act II,
which has not been performed since the opera's preview in Boston in 1935
(prior to its first production that year on Broadway).
This
unstaged concert is another in a series of test performances at U-M for
The George and Ira Gershwin Critical Edition, following readings of "An
American in Paris" and Concerto in F in September 2016, and the 1924
jazz band version of "Rhapsody in Blue" in October 2014.
The
test performance will be a highlight of the USO's concert season,
featuring distinguished soloists, including Morris Robinson as Porgy,
Talise Trevigne as Bess and Chauncey Packer as Sportin' Life. Current
SMTD voice student Rehanna Thelwell will sing the part of Maria, and
eight other SMTD students—Dorian Dillard, Darius Gillard, Julian Goods,
Camron Gray, Lenora Green, Goitsemang Lehobye, Edward Nunoo and Yazid
Pierce-Gray—will perform solo parts. SMTD alumna Janai Brugger, who is
making her mark on opera stages across the globe, will sing the role of
Clara.
While
the critical score of "Porgy and Bess" remains several years away, the
performance materials being developed now will receive their official
world premiere in 2019 at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
In conjunction with the performance, students and community members are invited to attend or livestream
a scholarly symposium on issues of race in "Porgy and Bess," which will
unpack the opera's complexities and controversies. Speakers—including
students, scholars and performers—will confront the wounds of prejudice
within this work, from both historical and contemporary perspectives.
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