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If you do
not know the story of Porgy and Bess, it is most
easily explained as a story of life, death, struggle and
love. The opera shines a light on the interactions and
social plight of the inhabitants of a small black community
during the 1920’s.
The story
is set in Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina and
centers around Porgy, an honest God fearing cripple and
Bess, a loose woman. The opera unfolds the circumstances
that bring them together and ultimately tear them apart.
I had the
opportunity to discuss Porgy and Bess with Professor
Myra Merritt. Merritt is a vocal professor at Bowling State
University. She holds a bachelor’s degree from the Peabody
Conservatory of Music and master’s degree from the Catholic
University of America. Merritt has performed around the
world in various operas making her debut with the
Metropolitan Opera in 1982. She has performed in Porgy
and Bess at the Houston Grand Opera, Metropolitan Opera
and overseas.
Z: With
Porgy and Bess being here recently with the Toledo Opera, I
wanted to talk to you a little about that and also about
your career, your performances and your experiences with
Porgy and Bess. I had the opportunity to sit in on the
Thursday night rehearsal, because it [the show] was sold out
and I wanted to have the opportunity, just to have a
conversation about it [Porgy and Bess].
Myra
Merritt: So you went to the rehearsal?
Z: I
went to the student night. Yes.
Merritt:
Did you like it, did you enjoy it?
Z: I
enjoyed the music, but because it was a concert opera. I did
not enjoy that so much.
Merritt:
Yes, I know, and I think oh too bad. I think a number of
people didn’t realize it was going to be a concert version.
Which means the singers basically just stand up and sing and
there is no real acting and no props. They did have the
projection; you know they did project some pictures so you
sort of had an idea of what life was like at that time. You
know the opera takes place in the 1930s somewhere around
there, so you have an idea of what it was like for those
black people to live in that Catfish row, a poor black
tenement. It was kind of strange to see Porgy walking
around.
Merritt
laughs. -
Z: Yeah,
I mean for him. In that instance Porgy is a cripple, the
gentleman who played Porgy, he was a strapping, healthy man
who was walking around. There was not that much of an
impediment to him.
Merritt:
Exactly. That was strange for me too. But I’m so familiar
with this opera, I’ve done it so many times so I knew what
was going on. I actually have performed it with the [the
singer] who did Porgy. I [performed] it with him in Berlin
and I [performed it with him in Austria.
Z: Oh so
you knew Mr. Hawkins very well.
Merritt:
Yes, actually I am from Washington D.C. and he is from the
D.C. area. I’ve known Gordon for a while actually.
Z: Had
you performed with any of the other cast members?
Merritt: No
but I had a student, a former student in this particular
production. Her name is Samantha McElhaney.
Z: She
played Lily.
Merritt:
Yes, she did, she played the part that I did and she was
also the Strawberry Woman. I taught her when she was in the
ninth grade. She is from the D.C. area too. She was
attending a school for the arts in Maryland, right outside
of D.C. and I taught her when she was in the ninth grade all
the way up until the 12th.
Z: How
wonderful was it for you to see her in the production?
Merritt: Oh
it was great! I love her, she is pretty special! Let me tell
you, I brought her here with me when I came. In 1995, I
brought her with me, because she didn’t have a school to go
to and I said you are not going to just sit here and do
nothing in D.C., I’m taking you to Bowling Green. It was my
first year here and I called the dean to see if I could
bring a student and they allowed me to bring her and we got
a scholarship for her and she graduated from BGSU in about
three years. I don’t know how that child did that, it almost
killed her to do all that work because it is really a four
or five-year program at BG. But she did it in three years, I
don’t know how she did it. She is awfully smart. I am so
proud of her; and she is a BGSU graduate.
Z: Now
that’s awesome. It’s great to know that our local
universities are producing this caliber of talent. Not just
know it but to actually see it. With your experience with
Porgy and Bess, I know you have played Bess. What other
roles have you played?
Merritt:
The first one that I played was Lily. She has about three
lines in the whole opera and that was my first experience.
That was in 1976 and I played Lily. [Merritt laughs] I used
to tell people I was merely a child, but I hardly a mere
child, hardly. I was 34.
Z: Now
was that with the Met?
Merritt:
No, that was in Houston.
Z: So
you were in the Houston production?
Merritt:
Yes, the Houston Grand and that was the first time an
American opera company performed that opera Porgy and
Bess. And not a musical theatre company. All along only
musical theatre people would produce it, on Broadway or
something. But this was the first time in 1976 that an
actual opera company produced it. It [Porgy and Bess]
gained a lot of credibility because it was produced by an
opera company. That production won a Tony Award, I think it
is the only opera company to win a Tony for a production.
Then we made a recording and that won a Grammy.
The first
time I did Porgy, I was Lily. We started off in
Houston and then went to D.C., which is my home, then
Philadelphia and then we went to Broadway. So it was about a
six-month run of that opera for me. Then I did not do it
again until 1985 and I was at the Metropolitan Opera by
then. I did the part of Clara. Clara is the young woman that
sings “Summertime.” I was the first Clara to sing it at the
Met.
Since then,
I performed in Berlin and then Vienna. Let’s see, I started
out as Clara at the Met, then I later ended up doing
performances as Bess. The first time I ever did Bess was at
the Met, that was because Berlin was calling me and asking
me about doing Bess. So they gave me some performances at
the Met, which was really very nice. It was like ‘We’ll try
you out to see how well you do it’. So I did it in Berlin,
Moscow, Vienna, Helsinki, and Bergenz, Austria.
Z: The
performance we saw was a great production. We know that
there are different versions, the stage version, the concert
version that we saw and then there is the full blown opera.
Is the Opera your favorite?
Merritt:
Yes, I think once you see the opera fully staged and you see
Porgy getting around on his knees and the way he looks up at
Bess. The way she [Bess] carries herself, she does have some
redeeming qualities that Porgy brings out. You don’t see
that when you first meet her in the opera. She comes in on
the arms of her boyfriend, who is Crown. He is a very brutal
person, but once she meets Porgy I think she really falls in
love with Porgy. Her whole personality changes. It is a
great role to play because there are so many facets of her
personality that you have to make clear to the audience. You
have to make it clear that once she meets Porgy, she is not
the same person, she is a totally different person. Porgy is
a wholesome, Christian, Godly man who has a lot of integrity
and he brings out the best in her. So it’s really
devastating at the end when she runs off with Sportin’ Life.
Z: When
you go to the opera, you tend to feel that there is always
that sad ending, just that tragedy.
Merritt: I
know, it’s so sad.
Z: To
see it coming across in this platform with these characters,
to have that up even though they are in a desolate area and
see the uplift of the community. It makes you think that
Porgy and Bess is going to end on a happy note. Then in true
fashion of the opera, it ends tragically with heartbreak.
Merritt:
The Dubose Heyward novel; there was the novel and then they
came out with the stage play. This was in the 1920, I
believe the wife, Dorothy wrote the play. The Heywards
wrote the novel together and the novel ends very differently
than the play and the opera. The opera follows explicitly
the play and at the end of the play Bees runs off with
Sportin’ Life and Porgy he gets in his goat cart and goes to
find her in New York. But in the actual novel he doesn’t go
off, he stays at home. So it is very different, the two
versions.
Z:
Overall how would you rate this performance of Porgy and
Bess?
Merritt: I
think I felt the way most people felt. We wish we could have
seen the staging. Because I know it so well and I’ve done it
so many times. I can just imagine the staging. For me it
wasn’t so difficult, but I think for some of the students
that I spoke with afterwards, I think they were
disappointed. They thought they were going to see a fully
stage opera, then they saw people standing there in
costumes, not really acting. Because it is a folk opera, it
is more down to earth and you expect people to be a lot more
natural. They were trying to act, that was tough for those
singers, because they did not have anything to play off of.
No props or scenery.
The one we
saw the other night had cuts in it. Quite a few cuts. That
opera is about an hour longer than that. It is about four
hours. What we had the other night was not quite three
hours. So there were a lot of cuts. It is a long opera. When
we did it with Houston there were no cuts, it was a long
evening. Still it’s different when you see it acted out and
you are really able to understand relationships between the
characters on stage and the costumes. You see the goat up
there trying to pull Porgy around and see how difficult it
is for him to get around. There are some young kids running
around playing and you see how they try to help Porgy. It
makes a huge difference when you see it stage. You really
understand it and it doesn’t seem quite as long.
Also, I’ve
never seen Porgy and Bess with a white choir, a mixed choir,
I have never seen it, that was a first for me.
Z: Yes,
and they were on stage, too.
Merritt:
Yes, and there is a dialect, the Gulla dialect, and the
rhythm and music and the spirituals. All of that music is
indigenous to blacks, African Americans. A lot of those
singers up there were students from BGSU and a number of
them were my students. They did a really good job.
Z: I
agree. The only thing was that since it was a concert
setting, it distracted me having the chorus on stage and the
orchestra on stage. You’ve played both parts, are you Bess
or are you Clara?
Neither
one. Bess is a very weak woman. She’s someone who is one
drugs. She has lived a pretty rough life. It is pretty sad,
she’s an abused woman and she is the product of her
environment. It is interesting that that opera goes into
some subject matter that are still a reality today like
police brutality. It is interesting, Gershwin paints a very
negative picture of the white police officer in that opera.
That is in 1935. Then there is the drug epidemic that is
still around today, the violence that is in the black
community, things that we are still addressing today. So
no…
I’m
certainly not a young mother like Clara either. She has such
high hopes for her baby. That summertime, is going to rise
up singing. She really believes in that baby and she adores
her husband. I’ve had wonderful experiences with each of
those roles that I did. Even Lily with only three or four
lines. Clara singing Summertime and Bess, she has
such wonderful facets to her character. It is a real
challenge to play her. You have to see all those different
elements there.
So my
last question to you is Porgy and Bess, out of all the
operas you have perform, is it your favorite?
It
definitely my favorite American opera. It has so many
different musical elements. It has classical music and it is
an opera. For a long time, it was thought of as just a
musical theater piece, but it really is an opera. Especially
after you have performed the roles of Bess or Clara. It
takes a real or a singer to cut through that orchestra, the
orchestration is so heavy. Heavy meaning lots of horns and
big sounds underneath of you, and your voice has to cut
through all of that. I love the story and the music is
irresistible. I’ve heard it seems like all of my life and I
never get tired of hearing it. The story is really heart
wrenching; it just tears your heart out. So it is my
favorite American opera.
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