Porgy and Bess: A Review

Last Saturday I took advantage of the Metropolitan Opera's brilliant marketing strategy designed to bring live opera to folks outside of New York City. For just $28 and change, I found myself sitting in a seat in my local multiplex waiting for David Robertson to begin conducting "Gershwin's Porgy and Bess". The broadcast started just after 1 pm, and began by panning the audience arriving in their seats in the Metropolitan Opera House.

People were, for the most part, dressed to the nines for early afternoon; not many attendees wearing jeans or Giants jerseys.  This being an opera about Black people from the Gulla culture (South Carolina and the Georgia Sea Islands), I expected to see more African-American people, but didn't see many.

A member of management whose name escapes me came out on stage, and announced to the crowd that the man playing Porgy was singing with a "very bad cold" (you wouldn't have known it) and was going to soldier through it rather than cancel. The overture started, and I thought, "Oh, this will be good."--and musically, I was certainly not disappointed.

Individual performances were strong, especially Met veteran Denyce Graves, who played Carla, the matriarch of Catfish Row, and Angel Blue, the well-meaning but ultimately easily-swayed Bess. Men in the cast also played their roles well, and all the hit tunes with which we've become so familiar over the years were given their due. This production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess is the only production of this opera that I've seen, so I don't have anything with which to compare it.

But:

1) The HUGE, rotating, skeletal set piece that served as the Catfish Row neighborhood frankly took up too much room on stage.

2) As a result, the already too-large chorus was crowded into the front third of the stage, leaving too little room for the dancers.

3) The more I watched, the more Gershwin's Porgy and Bess (1935) reminded me of another piece of that period--Jerome Kern's Show Boat (1928), with highly stylized dancing, outlandish characters that veered dangerously into the gray area of caricature, and a script that treated the male characters as deeply flawed and the female characters as virtuous and noble, except for Bess, who was led astray by two men--Crown, and Sportin' Life, with whom she left Catfish Row for New York City, presumably to be pimped out by Sportin' Life.

Changes, opus IV

So I’ve been playing trombone for 48 years and singing in choirs and on stage and in church for far longer. I will be sporting hearing aids when I report for work on Wednesday, September 4. My hearing—and in particular, my ability to understand spoken language—has been declining for several years now. It’s been frustrating to say the least, not just to me but to family members, friends, library patrons, and musical associates, all of whom have had to endure my asking them to repeat themselves slower and louder. If I had to guess the cause of this, I’d have to say that 48 years of trombone playing, listening to music, and leading and rehearsing with musical groups of various ages and sizes have all taken their toll.

The cause isn’t important. I learned enough about the hearing issues faced by aging musicians along the way to know that it was coming, regardless of how I protected my hearing. The difficulty is going to be the adjustment to listening with a new set of “ears”, two little buds that sit behind my ears, with wires sticking into the canal.  It’s not a cochlear implant—I can put them on and take them off at my leisure.

In all honesty, I have no idea how this will affect my music-making now and in the future.  I asked for a leave of absence from the SPSO, the orchestra with which I’ve played for the last fourteen years, in order to get used to the devices while playing, singing, and talking. As for church choir, I’m going to see if I can continue to participate, but I can’t make any promises. It would be far easier if I was able to attend rehearsal but due to my work schedule that's not possible. Stay tuned...

Onward.

*--David Bowie, Hunky Dory, 1971.

PS: Welcome to the first person from the Maldives who visited this blog this week! Feel free to comment on anything you read here. I have never expected that this will be a place to hold chapter meetings of the local mutual admiration society, so if you disagree with me violently, have at it. 

The Name Game*

I know that this isn't about library work or non-profits, but:

I read and enjoyed this article on unusual saint's names and why you might consider them for your sons, but came to the conclusion that parents would encourage instant bullying of their boys if some of these were first names, regardless of historical importance or intent. Of course, the middle schooler/Eddie Haskill in me came up with nicknames based on these which would have the unfortunate ability to stick for life. To wit:

Bairfhion--"Barf"

Serapion-- "Sir a-peein"; "You're-a-peein'';

Zynoviy--"Zee" strictly for simplicity's sake--but this is a name you give your child if you want to cause every teacher he has to develop a double-take tic, or so that your son will endure a life time of "how do you spell that?" or "Z-Z-Z (awkward silence) 'How do you pronounce that?'". Actually, I'm guessing that's pronounced ZehNOvee--sort of rhymes with "Genovia" (See "Princess Diaries").

Aceptismas--"Axe", "Hatchet", "Unacceptable"

Vimin--"Vermin"; "Vimen" (if you're a SCRABBLE player)

Pollio--"String Cheese", "Polio"

Alphege--"Fetch" "Fletch"

Pancras--"Pancreas"; "Pancake"; "Waffle" (okay, that one is a stretch)

Now middle names are another story. Like many people, I didn't learn some of my classmates more colorful middle names until high school graduation rehearsal. A creative parent might get away with using one of these for a middle name, but...

*--Shirley Ellis, 1964.

Secret Agent Man*

It's summer, and we're running out of ice (Thank you, Rodgers and Hammerstein).

One of my summer projects is archiving our remaining sound recordings on LP. I had to laugh at one particular partial set. It's published by the"War and Navy Department"--which means it's pre-Cold War (before the name changed to Department of Defense in 1947)--and it's a partial set of educational records for instruction in conversational Russian. Several of the discs are subtitled "listening in", which, given the era, take on serious, somber overtones. I suppose it COULD mean for the listener to practice listening to the Russian conversation that occurs on these recordings, but why did I just think of Boris and Natasha Badenoff?

Onward...or not...

*--P.F. Sloan and Steve Barri, 1966, for the British TV show "Danger Man".

Seasons of Love*

Most Americans, even if they're not regular musical theater attendees, know the opening chorus from that Puccini-based knockoff, "RENT":

"Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear
Five hundred twenty-five thousand six hundred minutes
How do you measure, measure a year?"

I quote this not because I'm a fan of the show, but because there are times that 1) I do not feel as though my work is valued and 2) There's so much busywork and minutiae in creating records that it's easy to feel overwhelmed. That year that's spoken of in terms of minutes can be interminable.

I'm in the process of archiving spoken word recordings for the library, and finding the poetry and prose anthologies to be the most time-consuming. Besides performer information, there's author information for every author represented on the recording, AND often musical information to consider. Slow going to be sure, but the harder I work at it the faster closing time comes.  Onward...

*--from RENT (1993), book, lyrics, and music by Jonathan Larson.

Handyman*

I'm now at the start of my second year at Lincoln University. I always like the beginning of the semester--students have a heightened level of intensity at this point in the year. New classes, new expectations, students don't change much. 

I'm working from the third floor reference desk, where I was last night due to a power snafu on the main floor that didn't allow that reference desk terminal to be used.  A help ticket was turned in to the maintenance office--it's not an IT issue so who knows when it will be fixed? The glacial pace at which tasks get accomplished at this university is truly astonishing. We're still waiting on the vendor responsible for the sliding glass doors between the second floor computer lab and the reference area to be fixed. Until that happens, we cannot offer 24/7 access to the computer lab. There is no sense of urgency--only resignation and frustration that we're in this for the long haul.

I once wrote on this page about a former employer of mine, Bill Jaeger, who often complained of people's stunning lack of information and/or curiosity about the two things in life they spend the most money on--their homes and their cars.  It often feels like that in higher ed, too.

*Otis Blackwell, Jimmy "Handy Man" Jones, c. 1959.

La Bonne Cuisine*, part 3

So this month's Cookbook Club at the PCI branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia features "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Childs and Simone Beck (and that other woman). I've tried some of the recipes and don't find them particularly difficult if you follow the directions--including reading the directions, especially the part where JC tells the reader to go through the motions of preparing said dish--something I've been doing for several years, without knowing it was a good way to learn.  So far I've prepared Haricots Vertes a la Provencale and Boeuf aux Oignons.  Both have been wonderful, but it got me thinking about the 2009 movie "Julie and Julia", starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep in the titular roles. The premise of the story was that Julie set a goal for herself to prepare every recipe (her count was 524) in volume one of Julia's book in the course of 365 days. I've been reading and cooking from (with great pleasure, mind you) that book for the last week, and to say the least, her claim that she completed such a herculean task in the course of one year raises suspicion. Here's why:

1) The movie intimated that, while she had friends over on a regular basis, she cooked most often for her husband and herself.  Following the recipe to the letter would yield enormous amounts of food--according to the cookbook, for 4-6 people.  Did she cut the recipes down accordingly?

2) Given the amount of food, not to mention the exotic ingredients many recipes required, it would require a budget far exceeding their limited means.  Was Julie secretly wealthy?

I also availed myself of reading viewer reviews at IMDB.com and discovered that I am FAR from the only voice expressing skepticism.

All that being said, I'm looking forward to November 6 and the next session of Cookbook Club.

Bon Appetit!!!

--*Leonard Bernstein, composer, 1947. Full title: "La Bonne Cuisine: Four Recipes for Voice and Piano".