Prima Donna
Composer: Rufus Wainwright; Librettists: Wainwright and Bernadette Colomine. At: New York City Opera at Brooklyn Academy of Music, 30 Lafayette Ave., New York. Phone: 212-870-5687; www.nycopera.com; $25. Runs through: Feb. 25
The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess
Composer: George Gershwin; Libretto: DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, Ira Gershwin. Adapted by Suzan-Lori Parks and Diedre L. Murray. At: Richard Rodgers Theatre, 226 W. 46th St., New York. Phone: 877-250-2929; www.PorgyAndBessOnBroadway.com; $67-$139. Runs through: Sept. 30
Not anyone can write an operatic masterpiece on his or her first time out. Even the earliest efforts by the likes of Wagner, Puccini and Verdi are not in the standard operatic repertoire.
So when you look at all of the critical vitriol hurled at out Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright for his first opera, Prima Donna, he could at least be given some slack for trying. Yet a classic debut opera isn't impossible, especially when you have a musical genius well versed in both jazz and classical music like composer George Gershwin, who offered his first full-fledged "folk opera," Porgy and Bess, back in 1935.
I was able to take in both Prima Donna and Porgy and Bess during a recent weekend trip to New York. Porgy and Bess is back on Broadway, where it originally debuted (albeit in a controversially much-revised revival), while New York City Opera is presenting the U.S. premiere of Prima Donna through Saturday, Feb. 25, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). Due to budgetary issues, New York City Opera has since vacated its long-time home at Lincoln Center and is now an itinerant company.
It's interesting to note some similarities between Prima Donna and Porgy and Bess. Both operas are by composers initially most famous for writing hit popular songs rather than for serious operatic writing. And both works had scuttled plans to premiere at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Gershwin didn't want to have white singers performing in blackface for Porgy and Bess, which is why he turned down the pre-integrated Metropolitan Opera of the 1930s and opted instead for Broadway. As for an unnamed Wainwright opera (which eventually became Prima Donna), it was originally co-commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera and Lincoln Center Theater. However, the Metropolitan's plans fell through due to disagreements over a drawn-out production timetable and ostensibly because Wainwright chose to write the libretto (co-written with Bernadette Colomine) in French rather than English.
However, I have a suspicion that the Metropolitan Opera passed on Prima Donna because it just isn't that good. But that hasn't stopped Prima Donna from being picked up in other cities, ranging from its 2009 world premiere in Manchester, U.K., to subsequent appearances in London, Toronto and Melbourne.
As an avowed opera lover, you can sense Wainwright is clearly relishing his chance to write and orchestrate music for operatic singers and a symphonic orchestra for Prima Donna. Yet, Wainwright and Colomine are completely at sea at crafting a credible libretto with a good plot or much dramatic tension; plus, their French lyrics are filled with banalities and odd metaphors.
While some operas come with pages of plot synopses in the program, Prima Donna came with just one paragraph at BAM.
After a six-year absence, reclusive Paris soprano Regine St. Laurent (Melody Moore) plans on making a comeback to perform her signature role of Alienor d'Aquitane (a rather short opera, since it fits on just one vinyl album). Her longtime butler, Philippe (baritone Randal Turner), is excited about her potential rise back to fame, although her new maid, Marie (soprano Kathryn Guthrie Demos) is apprehensive. A visiting fawning journalist named Andre le Tourneur (tenor Taylor Stayton) arrives for an interview, setting up unreal hopes for Regine for a young new love.
The singers are all fine, although at times they were hard to hear in the balcony over the sometimes loud conducting of Jayce Ogren.
Director Tim Albery does what he can with what is glaringly thin dramatic material and the lushly orchestrated score filled with oddly placed crescendos. Set and costume designer Anthony McDonald creates a burnished silver mirror look about the Regine's sequestered setting, which also allows for production designer William Reynolds to overlay images of falling rain (or is it tears?) and bursting fireworks that go out all too soon (no doubt to be symbolic about Regine's own extinguished opera career).
Although many pop-music critics have acclaimed Wainwright's singing and songwriting as hyperemotional and even operatic, it's disappointing that his first foray into full-blown opera doesn't really ignite. Instead, Prima Donna comes off an unfocused damp squib.
At the very least, I noticed many more twentysomething hipsters in the audience than at most operas I attend, so hopefully they'll be willing to delve further into other operas that offer many more emotional rewards than the ones Wainwright attempts to offer in Prima Donna.
No doubt the Gershwin estate wants more audiences to fall in love with Porgy and Bess as a musical in addition to the work's critically debated reputation as "The Great American Opera." How else to explain why they gave permission to Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks (Topdog/Underdog), jazz composer Diedre L. Murray (Running Man) and Tony Award-nominated director Diane Paulus (Hair) to tinker with Porgy and Bess in a new Broadway musical edition?
Even before this new take on Porgy and Bess debuted in 2011 at American American Repertory Theatre in Massachusetts, diehard fans of Porgy and Bess as an opera were outraged. (Composer Stephen Sondheim took the rare step of publicly criticizing the creative team via a published letter in The New York Times.) Still, the public dispute generated lots of publicity, and it seems likely that this Broadway revival of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (how the Gershwin Estate wants the work to be officially billed) will spur more interest in this iconic work no matter where it is produced (including Chicago's own 2011 Court Theatre production of a chamber-sized Porgy and Bess).
As a diehard Porgy and Bess opera fan, I do miss the full orchestra, opera-sized chorus and un-amplified sound of the original. Yet the creative team of this new take on Porgy and Bess do offer a renewed vibrancy to the work, which flows much faster with Parks' streamlined and dramatically clarifying dialogue that replaces the sung recitative of the original libretto. Also, many more of the performances are more psychologically vibrant and true with these established musical theater stars than opera singers who train more for the voice rather than acting the honest characterizations.
Undoubtedly, one of the major reasons to see the production is for Tony Award-winning star Audra McDonald's haunting portrayal as Bess, the damaged good-time girl who is pursued by three different men in the South Carolina seaside community known as Catfish Row. In this production, Bess bears a physical facial scar from her brutish boyfriend, Crown (a hulking Phillip Boykin), and is a coveted target of big-city dope peddler Sportin' Life (a charmingly slithery David Alan Grier of In Living Color fame).
However, it's the honest and physically disabled beggar Porgy (Norm Lewis) who ennobles Bess, and their unlikely love in the face of so much adversity is truly touching. Though not as deeply resonantly with his voice as some operatic bass-baritones who have tackled the role, Lewis' Porgy is down to earth and full of goodness.
Choreographer Ronald K. Brown immeasurably aids Paulus in keeping this Porgy and Bess on the go and giving the ensemble such a strong sense of community. Joshua Henry as Jake, NaTasha Yvette Williams as Mariah and Nikki Renee Daniels as Clara particularly stand out in the supporting ensemble.
Now Riccardo Hernandez's set design is too much of a blank canvas to get a sense of the place of Catfish Row, but the simpleness allows the performers to come to the fore as they deliver such melodic standards as "Summertime," "Bess, You is My Woman Now" and "I Loves You, Porgy."
Rather than replace Porgy and Bess as an opera, this new Broadway musical adaptation feels more like a companion piece. Besides, there is plenty of room for Porgy and Bess to appear not only on the stages of grand opera houses, but at Broadway and regional theater levels, too.
