This is a "review" of last Sunday's Porgy perf, by a Berliner friend of one of my "internet" opera friends who lives in NY. One correction - there have been several productions of Porgy in Berlin since the famous 52 Porgy with Price and Warfield (e.g., Houston Grand Opera performed it here in the 80s), and Goetz Friedrich, late director of the Deustche Oper, has done it a couple of times at a smaller theater here (Theater des Westens).
-Willie Anthony Waters
It was not only a beautiful, but a deeply moving performance and the audience was enthusiastic, uncommon for our rather cool public here, despite the fact that the opera is shown every evening and that it was the 15th or 16th performance. As I wrote I needed some time to get accustomed to the music, which is rather far from that I usually listen to, and I needed about half an hour to get into the music. But then I was very moved too, by the music and by the stage, and the finale was overwhelming.
The opera group was the Cape Town Opera Company, only the orchestra was from Berlin. Stage director was Angelo Gobbato. You will know him because they wrote in the newspapers and in the programme that he is a very renowned artist in South Africa. The staging was completely realistic, I haven't seen such a staging for years, because they always show these crazy and absurd ideas of "progressive" stage directors here in Middle Europe. This staging was made very carefully and accurately in all details and I liked it very much. The Catfish Row was a run-down quarter in which white people had lived in former times, now it was partly broken off and only poor black people lived there. The time was not 1925 but perhaps 1970. You saw and felt the very difficult conditions under which people lived there.
Concerning the music I was most impressed not by the popular songs (I got plenty of nothing, It ain't necessarily so, Bess, you is my woman now and these hits) but of the great ensembles. It reminded me strongly of a great veristic opera. The singers all had big voices, the orchestra was loud and the performance had a tendency to great opera, not bad I think. Much better than a tendency to musical, because this is a sad, but nevertheless hopeful story.
The singers were nearly all very good in singing and action, no belcanto, but very authentic in style I think, and they were very suited for their roles with one exception: The singer of Bess was miscast. A very tall woman whose way to move was not elegant, with a very big but not pleasant voice, rather shrill. I think she is no bad opera singer but should sing character roles, not lovers. The singer of Porgy had a wonderful big and warm baritone voice and his singing went straight into the hearts, but most other singers were excellent too. Maestro Willie Waters did the musical direction very well and had big applause, but we must admit that the orchestra was not always perfect. You felt that the (German Symphony) orchestra was not accustomed to play music of such kind. Willie has the problem to play these performances with three different orchestras. It was not bad, but I can imagine that the performance with the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper did it more exactly and with more drive. They are on tour now.
"Porgy and Bess" is an opera shown not often in Berlin. My last performance was 20 years ago, and as far as I know there was no performance of the opera in the meantime. So it was very interesting for me to see and to hear this opera, and I had a very beautiful and moving performance by the Cape Town Opera Company.
I hope I was able to give you a short impression of this beautiful production, and we all should be grateful that we have a chance to see it here. All critics were very positive, and I think it is nearly sold out every evening.-Vigo
