Michael Sumuel and Angel Blue as Porgy and Bess in Houston Grand Opera’s 2025 manufacturing of Porgy and Bess.
Houston Grand Opera opened its 2025–2026 season on October 24 by returning to the opera that first launched it within the esteem of the humanities neighborhood 50 years in the past: Porgy and Bess, this time that includes Grammy-winning soprano Angel Blue and San Francisco–primarily based, globetrotting bass-baritone (and alumnus of HGO’s Butler Studio profession improvement program) Michael Sumuel because the titular leads. Within the 90-year historical past of the work and its rampant metamorphoses between media, in addition to altering views on race and duty in storytelling, Porgy and Bess has turn into the topic of appreciable crucial analysis from each detractors and defenders alike.
Composers (and brothers) George and Ira Gershwin cowrote and debuted the libretto, which they labeled a “people opera,” a couple of Black neighborhood within the fictional South Carolina city of Catfish Row in 1935. It thematically revolves round how the residents survive collectively below each the racism of Jim Crow legal guidelines and the financial devastation of the Nice Melancholy. The opera was primarily based on the e book Porgy by writer and lyricist DuBose Heyward, who, along with his spouse, Dorothy, tailored it right into a play that served as the inspiration for the eventual opera. The Gershwins, with George as composer and Ira as pianist, labored intently with the Heywards on their imaginative and prescient, crafting a narrative that facilities on the doomed love between the disabled beggar Porgy and Bess, a girl battling habit, who can be making an attempt to rebuild her life after an abusive relationship together with her ex-boyfriend, Crown.
Although it’s now thought-about a mainstay within the operatic canon, routinely carried out by firms throughout the globe, Porgy and Bess initially struggled to discover a foothold for each social and inventive causes earlier than HGO reframed perceptions of it in 1976.
Regardless of the Gershwins’ greatest efforts, Porgy and Bess was topic to cuts and controversies: some well-founded and finally integrated into future productions; others rooted within the prejudices of the time and greatest ignored. Written as an opera however steeped in jazz, gospel, spirituals, and different uniquely American genres originating with Black musicians, the outdated guard didn’t take the libretto significantly sufficient to let or not it’s carried out as such. “Picks from [Porgy and Bess] had been executed, a film had been produced of it, [but] not likely accomplished with many of the music. It was, principally, simply a number of the hit tunes,” says HGO refrain director Richard Bado, who will conduct a number of the performances held in November. “And so, it didn’t actually have a life with classically educated singers.”
Porgy and Bess has traditionally acquired criticism for its depiction of Black life by way of the eyes of white writers, nevertheless it’s additionally one of many few operas that require an all-Black, classically educated forged to look collectively on stage.
Porgy and Bess’s preliminary Boston and Broadway runs had been introduced kind of because the Gershwins specified, however its 1942 revival reworked it right into a musical. This development continued when director Ella Gerber held unique rights to the present all through the Nineteen Fifties. Not like opera, which is sung all through all the efficiency, a musical intersperses songs between dialogue. This alteration recontextualized story and music alike, foreshortening character and narrative nuances and lowering the music all the way down to extra conveniently consumed melodies. “Summertime,” for instance, a well-known and favored jazz customary since recorded by legends like Billie Vacation and Ella Fitzgerald, was initially the aria that opens Porgy and Bess. A younger mom, Clara (right here performed by soprano Raven McMillon), sings it to her youngster because the residents of Catfish Row settle in for a night of relaxation or play. It’s undoubtedly an exquisite association, deserving of basic standing, however the better-known association nonetheless didn’t align with the authors’ intent.
Bado says that, along with this, a few of Porgy and Bess’s failure to take off was as a result of small productions and casts that couldn’t convey the immense feeling in addition to larger-scale productions. “A lot of the piece, for me, is about neighborhood,” he says.
This was the, admittedly abbreviated, cultural milieu that HGO waded into when it determined to current Porgy and Bess in 1976. Producer Sherwin Goldman labored with then-director David Gockley to honor the nation’s bicentennial with a presentation of the American opera as an opera. The one cuts made had been to trim the runtime to a few hours, however the Gershwins’ themes and complexities remained intact. Choral chief Eva Jessye, who labored immediately with the brothers on the 1935 authentic, supplied perception into the Black Southern perspective—particularly concerning the Gullah individuals of South Carolina—to make sure this manufacturing of Porgy and Bess remained higher and extra firmly rooted within the cultures portrayed on stage than it had earlier than.
It was a success. A forged recording, that includes baritone Donnie Ray Albert as Porgy (who seems within the 2025 manufacturing because the fraudulent Lawyer Frazier) and soprano Clamma Dale as Bess, was nominated for six Tony Awards. And after the HGO manufacturing wrapped and moved to Broadway—a major rarity for an opera—it gained each a Tony Award for Most Progressive Manufacturing of a Revival and a Grammy for Greatest Opera Recording. The identical present continued after its Broadway debut, touring the US and Europe, the place it launched worldwide audiences to homegrown musical kinds and showcased what American opera composers are able to.
The most important success of Porgy and Bess revitalized curiosity within the opera. It modified HGO’s business standing from a regional theater to a world-class opera home, with nationwide critics attending reveals. Unsurprisingly, the Gershwins’ libretto ended up within the firm’s repertoire. Albert, a go-to actor for Porgy in productions the world over, reprised his position on the HGO stage in 1987 (in an interview with the opera’s media staff, he estimated that he’s performed the half 450 instances). And in 1995, Porgy and Bess returned to HGO as soon as extra earlier than touring Japan and acting at Milan’s historic Teatro alla Scala (a.okay.a. La Scala) and the Paris Opera. “They love jazz in Paris, and in Japan, it was an enormous sellout crowd,” says Bado. “It doesn’t have to simply play in the USA for it to achieve success… In my thoughts, it’s one of many—if not the—biggest American operas ever written.”
Right this moment, after a 30-year hiatus from the HGO stage, Porgy and Bess is again to commemorate the opera’s inextricable and historic involvement. However as a Melancholy-era opera penned by white males in a Black vernacular, attitudes towards the present have shifted primarily based on components such because the Civil Rights Motion, insensitive and reductive stagings (significantly throughout Gerber’s reign), and evolving views on racial justice over the many years.
Soprano Anne Brown, who originated the position of Bess in 1935, recalled her father expressing disappointment in her participation in a present he thought-about regressive and stereotypical. Harry Belafonte, the late civil rights activist, actor, and calypso musician, turned down the position of Porgy within the movie adaptation for a similar purpose. The position finally went to Sidney Poitier, although he, too, didn’t take into account himself a Porgy and Bess fan, both. Playwright and writer Lorraine Hansberry, greatest identified for A Raisin within the Solar, was a notable critic, as reported within the 1959 Selection article “Lorraine Hansberry Deplores Porgy.” She acknowledged the Gershwins’ good intentions, however nonetheless believed they perpetuated stereotypes reasonably than challenged them. Her public feedback, initially made to the Chicago Solar-Occasions, coincided with the discharge of the film adaptation of the musical.
Although James Baldwin admitted to having fun with the unique opera, the author and activist nonetheless thought-about Porgy and Bess “a white man’s imaginative and prescient of Negro life,” reasonably than a nuanced, genuine portrayal. In his essay “On the Horizon: On Catfish Row,” he wrote, “When it ought to be most concrete and looking it veers off into the melodramatic and the unique. It appears to me that the writer knew extra about Bess than he understood and extra about Porgy than he might face—than any of us, up to now, can face.”
Many critics categorical related issues: That its depictions of Black life within the Nineteen Thirties—significantly because it pertains to gender dynamics and habit—use stereotyping in lieu of character constructing and ignore many cultural and contextual nuances in favor of an unchallenging, self-contained narrative supposed to pacify audiences.
Bado believes that most of the criticisms stem from Porgy and Bess being whittled down to suit the musical format. He causes that rewriting the libretto as a play flattened a lot of the emotion and nuance the Gershwins hoped to convey. To keep away from persevering with this error within the 1976 revival, HGO consulted with and employed Black leaders and inventive professionals to make sure its staging didn’t reinforce racist tropes—a measure known as “sensitivity studying” in present parlance. This entailed eradicating most of the problematic particulars Gerber had beforehand insisted upon throughout the musical run, such because the white gloves required of refrain members—a humiliating, degrading relic of the minstrelsy period. Bado additionally factors out that HGO by no means made any alterations to the libretto to maintain up with social shifts, as a result of all adjustments in response to criticism had already come immediately from the Gershwin property.
Blake Denson as Crown and Latonia Moore as Serena, the spouse of the person he unintentionally kills in a struggle. Denson wished to take a extra human, three-dimensional path with the character as a way to spotlight the social elements of habit.
Right this moment, the rights holders will solely license Porgy and Bess if an all-Black forged is assured (apart from a small variety of principally silent white law enforcement officials), and the libretto’s official language has been up to date to excise phrases that at the moment are thought-about slurs. The script additionally permits producers, administrators, and actors to make dialect adjustments that extra precisely replicate up to date sensibilities.
Whereas current Black-penned operas, like Levi Taylor’s The Seer and Omar, by Michael Abels and Rhiannon Giddens, are gaining extra consideration and acclaim, for now, Porgy and Bess stays one of many uncommon alternatives for a big forged of classically educated Black opera singers to inform a Black story. For some performers concerned, erasing it from the canon would imply erasing an necessary second within the historical past of the arts. “I believe it’s necessary to proceed to have this opera, as a result of it is part of American historical past. And I’m a really large believer of should you don’t know your historical past, then you’re doomed to repeat historical past,” says baritone Blake Denson, who performs Crown in HGO’s present run (he has additionally portrayed the younger fishing boat captain, Jake, in earlier reveals).
Now, in 2025, HGO’s forged and crew intend to current Porgy and Bess because the story of deeply advanced human characters whose neighborhood is inexorably formed by exterior circumstances that stay prescient at the moment. Eight years after Harvey, it’s troublesome to witness the superbly choreographed, but completely heartbreaking hurricane and never instantly be reminded of environmental racism, and the disproportionate impression local weather change has on under-resourced—if not outright uncared for—Black neighborhoods. Peter, an aged honey vendor performed by tenor Marlin Monroe Williford, is jailed for Crown’s unintentional homicide of Robbins, just because the police wished to arrest somebody for the crime (the opera emphasizes the implicit racism—any Black man would do, irrespective of the alibis or witnesses).
Justin Austin as Jake and Raven McMillon as Clara in a devastating hurricane scene that up to date audiences could view by way of the lens of environmental racism.
For Denson, taking part in Crown is a chance so as to add dimension and compassion to an antagonistic position so typically dismissed as simply one other “blissful mud” (cocaine) addict, assassin, and abuser each in-story and out. Regardless that the scripting stays the identical, his strategy to characterization is a recent improve, one which examines habit and social stigma with deep care. “It’s such a captivating story to me personally. As an opera singer, we at all times need to cheer for the main girl and main man,” he says. “However I believe whenever you watch Porgy and also you perceive what’s occurring, and also you take heed to the issues that they’re saying, it’s like, ‘Oh man, I actually don’t need to cheer for anybody. It’s a really exhausting story to look at, since you actually see the ins and outs of habit.”
Denson notes that he approached Crown’s character with out making apologies for his injurious and lethal actions, however contextualized them as these of a person whose neighborhood by no means reached out a serving to hand when it was clear he was beginning to wrestle with habit—particularly contemplating, he says, that they justified consuming unlawful liquor whereas chastising these utilizing illicit medication. This element will not be express within the opera’s textual content, however for Denson it turned a grounding level for growing Crown. Such care reveals in his efficiency. Whereas Bess’s ex nonetheless does and says horrific issues, the subtleties and painstaking consideration given to the position push Crown previous a mere inventory operatic villain.
Denson additionally urges audiences to rethink the “codependent” dynamics in Porgy and Bess. He sees Porgy as alienated from society in a way just like Crown. Each are disabled: Porgy bodily, Crown as an individual with an habit, and the lads discover it tougher to expertise kindness and belonging of their neighborhood than a fishing boat captain or a honey vendor would. Every additionally clings to Bess as their solely supply of consolation, regardless of that being an unfair expectation for a lady herself grappling towards her personal habit.
“[Crown] is a really troublesome position, not simply singing-wise, however bodily, and appearing and understanding the in-depthness [of] the character. I’ve seen most individuals play Crown, and he’s simply always offended. It’s like, ‘Yeah, however why is he offended like that?’” Denson says. “So, I’m simply very grateful to my firm [for allowing] me to go in-depth with studying all of those characters, and never simply my character.”
He additionally expresses gratitude that he received to carry out alongside Albert, the person who could not have performed the primary Porgy, however in all probability gave essentially the most definitive and influential efficiency. Noting that “opera, usually, is at all times going to be offensive to somebody,” he additionally credit Donnie Ray Albert and HGO for his or her roles in pushing and difficult the artwork whereas additionally taking the criticisms significantly. “It was very uncommon throughout that point {that a} Black man was in a number one position, not to mention be capable to make Porgy the opera that it’s,” Denson says.
