100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (51 page)

Time: the 1920’s

Place: Charleston, South Carolina

First performance at Boston, September 30, 1935

    As a play,
Porgy
, by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, was a success. But when Mr. Heyward and Ira Gershwin made an opera libretto of it, with music by Ira’s brother George, it was a smash hit. The general critical opinion was: “Here is the first completely successful and completely American opera.” That was in 1935. Since its first successful run—first in Boston and later on Broadway—it has been repeatedly revived, sometimes with spoken dialogue, sometimes with Gershwin’s original recitatives. It reached Europe in 1945, when it was given in Switzerland and Denmark with largely European casts; but
it did not become really popular on that continent till an all-Negro company toured there in 1952–53. when Germany and Austria could not seem to get enough of it, while London provided crowded houses for several months on end. No previous or subsequent American opera—not even Gian Carlo Menotti’s great successes—seems to have found so strong a place in the Western world’s musical life. And even the East, at least as represented by Soviet Russia, has welcomed it enthusiastically.

ACT I

Scene 1
is a square in Catfish Row, Charleston, South Carolina. Here aristocrats once lived, but now Negro workers are crowded into it. The atmosphere of a hot, southern, summer night is set at once by the lovely lullaby
Summertime
, sung by the contented young wife and mother, Clara. Her husband, Jake, expresses the local male attitude toward the opposite sex in the jolly tune
A Woman Is a Sometime Thing
. Porgy, a cripple well liked in Catfish Row, comes in on his goat cart. The crap game, begun casually enough, develops in earnest, and becomes even more exciting when Crown takes part, for Crown is the local bully. A fight springs up like a flash fire, and Crown kills one of the men. Immediately he has to run off, leaving his girl Bess there. One of the flashier fellows, Sporting Life, tries—and fails—to get Bess to go with him to New York, and the women all shut their doors on her.

This is Porgy’s chance. He had always loved Bess, but from a distance because he was a cripple. Now she has no other place to turn, and as the scene ends, she enters Porgy’s home.

Scene 2
takes place in the room that used to be occupied by Serena and Robbins, but it is Robbins who has been murdered by Crown, and Serena’s neighbors are now gathered to sing over the body and to collect money for the funeral. Porgy, accompanied by Bess, comes in and contributes money and, a natural-born leader, he takes the principal part in the prayers and encouragement. Serena herself sings a deeply moving dirge (
My Man’s Gone Now
). A pair of white detectives breaks in on the sorrowing group to warn Serena that the body must be
buried the next day. Before they leave, they drag off with them old Peter, a perfectly innocent suspect.

A rather sympathetic undertaker—also white-now comes in; and although not enough money for a funeral has been collected, he accepts Serena’s promise to pay up later. The mourners approve of this, and the act ends as Bess leads them in a rousing song beginning: “Oh, the train is at the station.”

ACT II

Scene 1
It is now a month later in Catfish Row, and even though the September storms are due, the fisherman Jake is getting ready to sail for the blackfish banks. As for Porgy—he is living with Bess and is completely happy. He sings about it in fetching syncopation:
I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin
—and “nuttin’s” plenty for him. He even buys a fake divorce for Bess—a divorce from Crown, to whom she never was married—and he gets good news about his friend, old Peter, who is to be let out of jail. This is the occasion for another happy song—the
Buzzard Song
, originally cut out of the score by Gershwin in order to make the opera shorter. Sporting Life now makes one more attempt to get Bess to leave with him, but Porgy, a powerful man even though a cripple, scares the little nuisance almost to death. Left alone at last, Porgy and Bess sing the love duet,
Bess, You Is My Woman Now
.

A military band comes on now, followed by the crowd getting ready for a community picnic to Kittiwah Island. At first Bess wants to stay with Porgy, but when Porgy urges her to have fun, she goes along.

Scene 2
is at the picnic on Kittiwah Island. Sporting Life sings his worldly-wise ditty,
It Ain’t Necessarily So
, and this is followed by a brief, dramatic scene between Crown and Bess. Crown—still hiding from the police—emerges from a thicket. He manages to get Bess alone, and she finds it impossible—in spite of her love for Porgy—to resist him.

Scene 3
begins at dawn one week later. There are threats of a storm, as Jake the fisherman prepares to leave Catfish Row. As for Bess, she has been unconscious for a week after her
encounter with Crown on Kittiwah Island. Her neighbor Serena, Porgy, and others pray over her, and finally “Dr. Jesus” makes her well. Somehow Porgy knows she has been with Crown, and he tells her so. But he forgives her, and she admits she has promised to return to Crown. She wants to stay with Porgy but fears her own weakness should Crown return. Porgy promises to defend her against him.

Scene 4
takes place in Serena’s room. The terrible storm is now at its height, and all the superstitious neighbors are praying, for some of them really believe that Judgment Day is at hand. Suddenly Crown forces his way in. He taunts the crippled Porgy and shocks everyone by claiming God as his friend. But when Clara sees—through the window—that her husband Jake’s boat is overturned, it is only Crown who is ready to help. Leaving the baby with Bess, Clara follows Crown out into the raging storm.

ACT III

Scene 1
All three short scenes in this act take place in Catfish Row. The first opens with the women mourning the loss of Jake, Clara, and Crown in the storm. But Sporting Life wanders in and hints that Crown has survived somehow. Offstage, when the square is deserted, one hears Bess singing Clara’s lullaby to the little orphan.

Then Crown appears, crawling toward Porgy’s door, from which he can hear Bess’s voice. As he passes the window, the powerful hands of Porgy shoot out, seize Crown by the throat, and quietly choke him to death. “Bess, you got a man now,” he remarks. “You got Porgy.”

Scene 2
A few hours later a detective comes to find Crown’s murderer, and after some questioning he drags off Porgy to identify the body. This is Sporting Life’s chance. Thinking himself rid of both his rivals, he again starts to woo Bess, promising to take her to a great life in
There’s a Boat That’s Leavin’ Soon for New York
, a jazzy description of the joys of Harlem. He also tempts the girl with drugs—“happy
dust,” he calls it; and Bess, though she talks harshly to her tempter, is obviously weakening.

Scene 3
One week later Porgy returns, for the police have not been able to charge him with the murder. He looks everywhere for his Bess. Finally he learns that she has gone to New York with Sporting Life. He knows nothing about New York—only that it is far north, way “past the custom house.” Crippled as he is, he calls for his goat and cart. As the opera ends, he is being sped on his way by all his neighbors, and he leads them in a chorus like a spiritual
(Oh, Lawd, I’m on My Way
).

PRINCE IGOR

(Knyaz Igor)

Opera in prologue and four acts by Alexandre
Porfyrevich Borodin with the help of Nikolai
Andreevich Rimsky-Korsakoff, Alexandre Konstantinovich
Glazounov, and Anatol Konstantinovich
Liadov, with libretto in Russian by
Vladimir Vasilevich Stassov and the composer,
based on a medieval prose poem of unknown
origin entitled
Song of the Army of Prince Igor

Time: 1185

Places: Poutivle and the camp of the Polovtsians

First performance at St. Petersburg, November 4, 1890

    Let us start, for once, by giving credit to a critic. Vladimir Vasilevich Stassov was the monstrously learned archaeologist, librarian, and music critic who constituted an intimate adjunct to the Mighty Five of Russia—Balakirev, Cui, Borodin, Moussorgsky, and Rimsky-Korsakoff. Among the many services
he performed for these composers (including writing biographies of all but Balakirev) was the suggestion to Borodin of Prince Igor as the subject for an opera. Not only did he suggest it, he also wrote out a synopsis for the libretto.

The source of the story is a fourteenth-century prose poem entitled
Song of the Army of Prince Igor
, which deals with a twelfth-century military expedition undertaken against the Tartars. To understand it properly—particularly the prologue and Act I—one should know that Novgorod was, at that time, a cross between a democracy and a constitutional monarchy. That is, the princes were elected, their chief function was to act as military leaders, and they derived their authority and subsidies from their subjects, not from the nobility.

But it was not so much the political aspects of the story that attracted Borodin as it was the chance to write music in contrasting colors—Russian and Tartar. And how well he took advantage of it!

Borodin was a chemist—and a distinguished one—by profession, a composer only by avocation. It may have been for this reason that, while Stassov came up with his notable suggestion as early as 1869, the score was still uncompleted when Borodin died of a heart attack, eighteen years later, during a costume party he was giving in his own home. Rimsky-Korsakoff and Glazounov, with help from Liadov, orchestrated more than half the opera and completed the composition of several of the scenes that remained unfinished. But these composers often worked so closely with each other (they had shared assignments for different parts of the same string quartet, the same ballet) that it is almost impossible to detect where one hand leaves off and the next begins. Stassov left an account of who did what, but so well did they subject their individualities that it is a matter of interest only to the historian.

PROLOGUE

After an overture based on a number of the themes to be heard later, the curtain rises on a square in the city of Poutivle, and the chorus sings in praise of the military leader, Prince
Igor, who has just left the cathedral preparatory to leading an expedition against the Tartars. Suddenly an eclipse of the sun frightens everyone, and the boyars attempt to dissuade Igor from embarking on the expedition: it is a bad portent, they say. Igor, however, refuses to be moved, and orders his army on its way. All the soldiers go, excepting a couple of rascals named Skoula and Eroshka—players on an ancient stringed instrument called the
gudok
—of whom we shall hear more later.

Even Igor’s beloved wife, Yaroslavna, cannot persuade him to remain home. He commends her to the care of her brother, Prince Galitzky, who is to rule the city in Igor’s absence. Galitzky thanks his brother-in-law; an old priest offers a blessing; Igor and his son Vladimir join the army; and the chorus again chants the praises of their leader.

ACT I

Scene 1
The true character of Galitzky, which had before been suggested only by the nature of the music assigned him, now comes out clearly. At his court he has won over the mob by giving them various luxuries and entertainment; he freely admits that he loves a life of ease himself; and more secretly he hopes that he may replace Igor on the throne. As for Yaroslavna—let her get herself to a nunnery.

The nature of his administration of justice is revealed when a couple of frightened girls ask his protection against his own men, who have abducted a third girl. Galitzky simply tells them that the girl is better off where she is now. Finally, when he has left the stage for some private carousing, the crowd opens a barrel of wine and thoroughly enjoys itself in a lively chorus. Skoula and Eroshka, who have been prominent in the anti-Igor demonstrating earlier, don’t stint themselves with the wine, and they are left behind, drunk.

Scene 2
In her room Yaroslavna bewails the absence of her husband and son; but her spirit is roused when the two girls who have been so badly treated in the previous scene come to her for protection. It seems that Galitzky himself has violated their friend, and when he comes in, Yaroslavna threatens
to have him punished on Prince Igor’s return. Galitzky only laughs at his sister, but she is more than a match for this bluffer. Before she is through with him, he has promised to bring the girl back to her home. He then bows himself out of the room and the opera—a good loss in terms of the company we are expected to keep, but a bad one in terms of missing a well-drawn character.