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The Toledo Opera and Truth Gallery Hosts Porgy and Bess
Forum
Sojourner’s
Truth Staff
On February
9, just days before Porgy and Bess opened at the
Valentine Theater, the Toledo Opera and the Truth Gallery
hosted a panel discussion about the opera and its place in
American culture both historically and currently.
The panel
included soprano Laquita Mitchell, Bess in this production,
and baritone Kenneth Overton, who played Jake, along with
University of Michigan musicologist Mark Clague, who has
conducted extensive research over the years on Gershwin’s
work in general and the opera in particular.
The George
Gershwin masterpiece, based on a Dubose Hayward book, opened
just over 80 years ago but had a mixed reception, for a
variety of reasons, until 1976 when the Houston Opera
revived the work. Since then the opera has been recognized
as, perhaps, the definitive American opera.
For many
years the opera, with its stereotypical depictions of
African Americans, was disdained by many in the black
community. Performers declined to accept roles. In fact,
when the Houston Opera decided to produce the work in 1976,
the director had to travel all over the country to sign up
singers – not because there weren’t enough good ones, but
because so many declined his offers.
Soprano
Mitchell and baritone Overton , both of whom have performed
in Porgy and Bess on numerous occasions and in
different roles, are here to tell us that such former
reluctance on the part oo performers to take parts in the
opera is no longer the case, or, “it ain’t necessarily so.”
The
discussion drew about 70 people to The Truth Gallery on
Adams Street. |
