Audiences might go to see Seattle Opera’s “Porgy and Bess” for the star value – baritone Gordon Hawkins and soprano Lisa Daltirus in the title roles – or for George and Ira Gershwin’s beloved music. They won’t be disappointed.
But the real thrills in this show are the production values and the chorus and secondary singers. These folks put heart, soul and fantastic singing into the familiar score.
“Porgy and Bess” – the tale of a beggar who falls in love with a dependent, drug-addicted woman in an early 20th-century black Charleston slum – is an ensemble opera that relies on a chorus to supply the traditional spirituals and a host of minor characters to advance the plot around the lead couple.
This first homegrown production has been a long time coming at Seattle Opera (previous runs have featured Houston Grand Opera productions), and for good reason. Not only is it potentially controversial (many people think the opera is a racist take on black history), it calls for an almost completely African American chorus – very different from most of Seattle Opera’s regular chorus.
But the chorus in “Porgy,” drawn from the local community, is stunning. The acting’s a little overdone, maybe, but the singing is terrific – full-throated, responsive and genuine, particularly in the call-and-response of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and the funeral spirituals. Director Chris Alexander moves them about the gorgeously rundown shanty set with a mixture of relaxed swagger and “Guys and Dolls” snappiness.
Also stunning are the minor-role singers. Angel Blue, who opens the opera with the famous “Summertime,” imbues Clara with quiet lightheartedness; Donovan Singletary sings her fisherman husband Jake with a strong, easy voice. Mary Elizabeth Williams is stunning as the bereft Serena, her Jesus-raising soprano effortlessly filling the hall with powerful emotion and wild bluesy ornament. As Maria, the town busybody, meanwhile, Gwendolyn Brown steals the show – a no-nonsense mama whose flips from rich alto to deep Southern back talk have both stage and audience in thrall.
Then there’s the production itself. The set of tumbledown dockside houses moves from scrim photograph to silhouette to sepia to full-color reality with imaginative beauty, and the visuals only get better – a chiaroscuro light highlighting Serena’s devastating emotion during her husband’s funeral, the eerie golden-green of the mossy trees at the island picnic as Bess is lured back by her violent boyfriend, the panicked clustering as the hurricane arrives.
Throughout the jazzy score, the orchestra plays excellently, with lush strings, brilliantly frenetic xylophone solos and laid-back tempi from conductor John DeMain.
And the principals? Well, they’re worth seeing, but only as part of the whole tapestry. Hawkins and Daltirus have sung these roles separately many times and they’re secure in their interpretations: Hawkins as a depressed, introspective Porgy who’s anticlimactic in “I Got Plenty of Nuttin’ ” but who rises to an immense gravitas in his grieving trio and sunlit solo at the end; and Daltirus as a sweet-voiced Bess who captures the stage with her tottering sluttiness and orange wig but then reveals a self-despising misery as she is forced to choose between Porgy’s hope and the violent seduction of her boyfriend Crown and his “happy dust.” Unfortunately, the complete lack of chemistry between Bess and Porgy, compared to Bess and Crown, leaves a bit of a hole in the fabric of the story.
As Crown, Michael Redding gets better as he moves from bravado to animalistic sexiness to maniacal hubris. Jermaine Smith takes on the drug dealer Sportin’ Life with a yellow-plaid showman’s excess, his tight tenor and fast dance moves enticing. (“It Ain’t Necessarily So” is incredibly trippy.)
When Bess makes her final, addiction-driven choice – and Porgy his quixotic one – the lighting, direction and acting add ironic layers of complexity that take this opera to a new level.
Rosemary Ponnekanti: 253-597-8568
rosemary.ponnekanti@thenewstribune.com ‘PORGY AND BESS’
What: “Porgy and Bess” by Gershwin, Gershwin, Heyward and Heyward, performed by the Seattle Opera
When: 7:30 tonight and Aug. 20, 2 p.m. Saturday
Where: McCaw Hall, Seattle Center, 305 Harrison St., Seattle
Tickets: From $25
Also: Seattle Opera is beginning a project, “Belongings,” constructing a newly commissioned opera from community-submitted videos about personal objects and traditions. Three-minute videos can be submitted online or at the video booths in McCaw Hall during “Porgy and Bess.”
Information: 800-426-1619, seattleopera.org
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