Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber

by Block, Geoffrey

  Clearly, even if Gershwin strove to approximate the “beauty of Meistersinger,” he did not want to approximate its length, at least not on Broadway.45 But opera epicureans used to Die Meistersinger and desirous of savoring every possible morsel of a work might eagerly welcome back the deleted forty-five minutes and perhaps endorse portions of the opera that never made it even to Boston, for example, the reconciliation duet between Bess and Serena in act III, scene 1.46 The Houston Opera producers, who felt no remorse at dividing the work into two long acts rather than the specified three in order to save overtime labor costs, perhaps did not even consider the option of cutting the “Buzzard Song.”

  Several years before the Cleveland and Houston recordings were issued, Wayne Shirley, an authority on the opera and a persuasive advocate for a score that represents the composer’s intentions, wrote that the “Buzzard Song” “is always cut, since Porgy has two other strenuous numbers in the scene, and the work flows better for the cut.”47 And although he does not offer an artistic justification for deleting this particular song, Hamm, who contends, as we have seen, that “most cuts made for apparently practical reasons were of passages already questioned on artistic grounds,” would presumably support Fred Graham, who introduces Kiss Me, Kate with the line, “Yes, the cut’s good, leave it in.”48 In contrast to Shirley and Hamm, Wilfrid Mellers has argued that the “Buzzard Song” constitutes “the turning-point of the opera, for it forces him [Porgy] to face up to reality and suffering…. The appearance of the buzzard marks Porgy’s realization of the significance of his love.”49

  Some might argue for the retention of the “Buzzard Song” on musical grounds; others might conclude with equal justification that the song creates a dramatic intrusion. Certainly the “Buzzard Song” undermines the effect of a scene that otherwise successfully shows Porgy and Bess as fully accepted members of the Catfish Row community and, of course, illustrates their genuine and optimistic love. Because Porgy’s superstitious nature had been de-emphasized in the adaptation of play to opera, its sudden appearance in this scene, despite Porgy’s ultimate ability to conquer his fear, creates an ominous tone that the love duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” cannot overcome. Porgy’s extraordinary fear in act III, scene 2, when he learns that he must look on Crown’s face or serve time in jail, is generated by his sense of guilt at having murdered Crown rather than by irrational superstition. (For this reason, its placement in act III of the Davis-Breen libretto makes artistic sense despite the absence of historical justification.) To historians troubled by the dramatic effect of the song, it comes as a relief to learn that the composer had agreed to and perhaps even suggested its deletion.

  Since the late 1970s the prevailing view holds that an uncut version of Gershwin’s rehearsal vocal score best represents the composer’s final intentions for the work. The more complete, the more authentic. For this reason few of the cuts noted by Hamm are in fact observed in current productions (although interestingly the video directed by Trevor Nunn in 1993 omitted the “Buzzard Song”); virtually none are observed in the three recordings of the work.50 The merits of the cuts can and should be argued on aesthetic as well as historical grounds, and perhaps Porgy’s cuts should be disregarded, especially on recordings, which are less beholden to the time constraints of a Broadway production. But any careful consideration must acknowledge that the published score does not represent what Theatre Guild audiences heard during the initial run and may be alien to Gershwin’s considered thoughts on the work.

  Race

  The criticism leveled at Gershwin for making his Broadway opera through-composed and for straddling two worlds with his concoction of sung speech and hit songs has somewhat abated in recent years. More persistently controversial is Gershwin’s claim that his “folk opera” expressed the African-American experience. Criticisms of Gershwin’s racial presumptions appeared as early as the 1935 Broadway premiere, but in contrast to the gradual tolerance and eventual appreciation of his musical ambitions and the work’s length, the hubris of Gershwin’s depiction of black culture has not diminished over time despite the proliferation of performances throughout the world.51 In fact, the growing “classic” stature of Porgy and Bess may actually have fueled racial controversies in recent years to a point that the problems brought about by what is perceived as cultural colonization and exploitation seems destined to remain central to the work in the minds of many for some time to come.52

  In chapter 2 it was noted that the creators and future producers of Show Boat made some revisions in response to evolving racial sensibilities. Hammerstein replaced the word “niggers” with “coloured folks” as early as the 1928 London production (“colored” in 1946) as the first words of the show. For his screenplay to the 1936 film Hammerstein substituted “Darkies all work on de Mississippi,” and in the 1946 film biography of Kern audiences heard “Here we all work on de Mississippi.” Miles Kreuger wrote that in a 1966 Lincoln Center revival, “Nobody works on the Mississippi, because the Negro chorus was omitted altogether from the opening number.”53 In the 1994 Broadway revival directed by Hal Prince, “Brothers all work on the Mississippi.”

  Accounts of the genesis of McGlinn’s recording of the “authentic” Show Boat of 1927 report that the contracted African-American chorus refused to sing the offending word “niggers” and therefore was replaced by the Ambrosian Chorus, who had been contracted to sing the white choral parts. To show his solidarity with the black chorus, Willard White, the Joe for this recording, resigned, and only after consultation with Eartha Kitt, a black performer and an articulate and influential opponent of racial indignities, did Bruce Hubbard consent to sing the role of Joe and the word “niggers.” Earlier, Etta Moten Barnett, who sang Bess in the popular 1942 revival of Porgy and Bess, recalled that the cast “refused to used the word ‘nigger,’ and it was removed from all of the lines except those spoken by white characters.”54 Some stage productions (and the 1951 film) of Show Boat circumvented the issue by minimizing the role of blacks, but this type of evasive action was, of course, impossible to accomplish with Porgy and Bess, Thus, from his time to ours, Gershwin’s opera has been chastised for its composer’s presumption to speak for another race.

  Thomson in his 1935 review takes Gershwin to task for attempting a folk subject: “Folklore subjects recounted by an outsider are only valid as long as the folk in question is unable to speak for itself, which is certainly not true of the American Negro in 1935.”55 A more detailed and closely reasoned critique of what Thomson termed “fake folk-lore” can be found in a review of the opera by Hall Johnson that appeared in the African-American journal Opportunity a few months after the Theatre Guild premiere.56 As the composer of The Green Pastures (1930) and Run, Little Chillun! (1933), two undisputed examples of authentic black folklore, Johnson’s credentials were impeccable for this task.

  Although Johnson, like Downes and Thomson, criticizes Gershwin’s craftsmanship, again mainly in the recitatives, most of his remarks focus on Gershwin’s misunderstanding of the African-American character and experience.57 According to Johnson, the first of Gershwin’s many inauthentic elements is his failure to capture “Negro simplicity.” For Johnson, Gershwin’s music “suggests sophisticated intricacies of attitude which could not possibly be native to the minds of the people who make up his story.”58 What makes the work “genuine” are the performances, particularly that of John W. Bubbles, of the vaudeville team Buck and Bubbles, who as Sporting Life played the central non-operatic character among the leading players. But despite Bubbles’s genuineness, Johnson viewed “It Ain’t Necessarily So” as “so un-Negroid, in thought and in structure that even Bubbles cannot save it.”59 On the other hand, perhaps because its derivations were more urban than folk, Johnson praises the authenticity of Sporting Life’s “There’s a Boat Dat’s Leavin’ Soon for New York” as a “real Negro gem.”60

  Criticism of Porgy and Bess on racial grounds reached a new level of intensity in the 1950s and 1960s, the era
of Brown v. Board of Education and the civil rights struggles for equality. Many blacks resented the fact that the State Department, in sponsoring a global tour in 1952, was propagating negative stereotypes. On a televised broadcast playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of Raisin in the Sun, criticized Otto Preminger, director of the 1959 film version of the opera, for “portraying Negroes at their worst.”61 A. S. “Doc” Young wrote in the Los Angeles Sentinel that Porgy and Bess “is completely out of context with modern times … it perpetuates old stereotypes that right-thinking people have buried long ago.”62

  Social historian Harold Cruse takes Hansberry to task for focusing on content in her criticism of Porgy and Bess.63 Cruse instead sees the work “as the most perfect symbol of the Negro creative artist’s cultural denial, degradation, exclusion, exploitation and acceptance of white paternalism.”64 He deeply resents the fact that blacks themselves did not produce their own authentic folk opera. He also considers it as indisputable that even if blacks had written such a work, it “would never have been supported, glorified and acclaimed, as Porgy has, by the white cultural elite of America.”65

  In Gershwin’s time knowledgeable black critics responded negatively to the composer’s attempt to come “as close to the Negro inflection in speech as possible” in his recitatives.66 Even the normally circumspect and polite Duke Ellington was reported to have said that Porgy and Bess “does not use the Negro musical idiom” and that “it was not the music of Catfish Row or any other kind of Negroes.”67 Others found the idea of whites speaking for blacks and the subject matter itself rather than the final product the principal source of consternation.

  Even those who for the most part reject Gershwin’s “fake folk-lore” might find something to appreciate in Gershwin’s assimilation of black culture inspired by his month at Folly Beach in 1934. Although simplistic by the standards of a master drummer, the polyrhythmic drumming that precedes “I Ain’t Got No Shame” in act II, scene 2, comes closer to black African drumming style than most jazz drumming (by drummers of any race) before the 1950s. Similarly, Gershwin’s attempt to capture the effect he and Heyward heard while listening outside a Pentecostal church in the opening and closing of act II, scene 4, “Oh, Doctor Jesus,” in which six prayers are presented in a six-part texture (unfortunately mostly cut in Boston and New York), is a dazzling translation of the black experience.68 Certainly, these two examples possess a “fake authenticity” analogous to nineteenth-century slave narratives written by whites or Forrest Carter’s best-selling bogus biography of the Cherokee Indian, The Education of Little Tree.69 If we use Henry Louis Gates Jr.’s “blindfold test” (in which an expert usually failed to determine the race of various jazz trumpeters without previous knowledge) to judge a work’s authenticity, Gershwin’s evocation of African-American drumming and prayer meetings might be heard more charitably.70

  For the sake of musical homogeneity, Gershwin in most instances purposefully created his own idiosyncratic pseudo-spirituals rather than copy those he had heard. He also preferred to freely adapt his own Russian-Jewish ethnicity into a personal interpretation of the African-American experience rather than slavishly imitate it. The strong kinship between these musically compatible traditions is evident in Sporting Life’s theme, which might be interpreted as a chromatic transformation of the Jewish blessing that precedes and follows the reading of the Torah (Example 4.2b).71

  How do we judge Porgy and Bess today, an opera that plays on black stereotypes and has served as a negative symbol of black exploitation? Is it enough to counter that the “civilized” and, moreover, non-singing whites in the drama “are also more unemotional, drab and dull” and, as Edith Garson says in her completion of Goldberg’s biography, “cruel and foolish”?72 In the 1980s, Lawrence Starr attempted to defuse the passions of this debate: “To insist on viewing Porgy and Bess as a racial document is to apply criteria which lie wholly outside the tradition to which this work relates, with the consequent risk of blinding oneself to the virtues it possesses.”73 Unfortunately, when considering the escalating tensions between Jews and African Americans after 1935, it seems less likely in the 1990s that the universal values of Gershwin’s opera espoused by Starr will soon transcend artistically as well as politically divisive racial issues.

  Establishing and Transforming Musical Character

  It was previously observed when discussing Show Boat that Kern chose musical themes in part for their symbolic possibilities and reworked these themes in order to reveal dramatic connections and oppositions (see the “River Family” of motives, Example 2.2, pp. 29–30). Kern also transformed two themes, Cap’n Andy’s musical signature and Magnolia’s piano music, to convey the continuity that underlies changing dramatic situations. Gershwin’s treatment of the first technique is similar to that of Kern, since Gershwin assigns specific themes to important characters (or to a thing like “happy dust”) and allows his listeners actively or subliminally the possibility of attributing dramatic significance to these themes.

  But Gershwin went beyond Kern in discovering varied and ingenious new ways to transform his melodies (even his hit tunes) for credible dramatic purposes. In altering Cap’n Andy’s theme and Magnolia’s piano theme, Kern altered tempo and character—and presumably asked Robert Russell Bennett to orchestrate these transformations—but he did not change the pitch content of either theme. When Gershwin musically responds to the ever-changing dramatic circumstances of his characters and their relationships, he frequently alters the pitches of the initial melodies by using a technique known as paraphrase. As his characters evolve, Gershwin adds and subtracts pitches and alters rhythms to create new melodies. In most cases these new melodies retain the identity inherent in their fundamental melodic contours. Some of Gershwin’s melodic transformations are difficult to perceive and are consequently meaningless to most listeners. Other transformations are questionably related to the central themes. The remarks that follow will focus on the most audible and dramatically meaningful of Gershwin’s melodic manipulations, a union of craft and art.

  Musicals, operatic and otherwise, thrive when they show two people in love that audiences can care about. The opera Porgy and Bess, like all the adaptations treated in this book, similarly places its greatest dramatic emphasis on the love-story component of its literary source. A related theme is the attempt of the principal characters to overcome their physical and emotional handicaps and dependencies, their loneliness and poor self-esteem, and to establish themselves as fully accepted members within a loving community. Act II, scenes 1 and 3, provide a good introduction to how Gershwin created a symbolic musical language to express these great dramatic themes.

  At the musical heart of the opera stands (or kneels, depending on the production) Porgy, not only because Gershwin gives him several themes but because these themes relate so closely to the Catfish Row community.74 Porgy may not feel as though he is a “complete” man (until ironically he gains his manhood and loses his humanity by killing Crown and then gloating over it), but from the outset of the drama he is definitely, unlike Bess, part of the community. It is fitting, then, that his main theme, shown in Example 4.1a, introduced by the orchestra rather than by Porgy himself, emphasizes a pure (or perfect) fifth and a minor (or blue) third, intervals that reasonably (if somewhat inexplicably) represent both the solidity and folk-like nature Porgy shares with Catfish Row as well as his sadness before he met Bess.75 Soon after his introduction in act I Porgy sings the first of two loneliness themes, “They pass by singin’” (Example 4.1b), a theme that melodically consists entirely of minor thirds and a theme that will retain its strong rhythmic profile in many future contexts.76

  Porgy and Bess, act II, scene 1. Todd Duncan in window at right (1935). Museum of the City of New York. Theater Collection.

  Moments later in this same monologue Gershwin has Porgy introduce a second loneliness theme (Example 4.1c), a melody that emphasizes a major second on “night time, day time” and “lonesome road” and a promi
nent syncopated rhythm () derived from the last two notes of Porgy’s central theme (Example 4.1a) and the rhythm of “singin’” (Example 4.1b).77 Having introduced these three rhythmically connected Porgy themes in the opening scene, Gershwin will, in act II, scene 1, establish connections between Porgy and his community to reveal how Bess and Catfish Row work together to eliminate Porgy’s loneliness.

  Example 4.1. Porgy’s themes

  (a) Porgy’s central theme

  (b) Loneliness theme

  (c) Loneliness theme

  (d) Loneliness theme in “Buzzard Song”

  (e) Loneliness theme in “Bess, You Is My Woman Now”

  Porgy’s loneliness themes will undergo further audible transformations in the “Buzzard Song.” Throughout much of the “Buzzard Song” Gershwin emphasizes the minor thirds that were so prominent in Porgy’s central theme (e.g., “Don’ you let dat buzzard keep you hangin’ ‘round my do’”), and he also retains the syncopations of the loneliness theme. But as seen in Example 4.1d, Gershwin intensifies Porgy’s loneliness by contracting his major second a half step in the song’s principal melodic motive to create a still-harsher minor second. Even if one questions the dramatic effect of the “Buzzard Song” on this scene and the drama as a whole and embraces the decision to remove it, its omnipresent syncopations and dissonant minor seconds certainly provide a fitting musical counterpart to Porgy’s sudden apprehension upon seeing a buzzard.