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See America First - The Black South, Part 2

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Just as Scott Joplin composed another opera before his only extant theatrical work, Treemonisha, discussed in Part 1, George Gershwin wrote a one-act jazz opera, Blue Monday, which premiered thirteen years before Porgy and Bess in a revue called Scandals of 1922. Modeled in theme on I Pagliacci, it employed blues as the American equivalent of the Italian verismo style, and is mostly of interest now as almost a work of juvenilia as compared with Gershwin's major works. Its plot is only just sketched in.

Porgy and Bess is monumental by comparison, richly scored (as discussed in Gospel Truths) and heavily laced with such issues as religious faith, sexual fidelity, the differences between traditional gender roles, and the loyalty of community. Porgy and Bess, as leading characters, are atypical residents of their Charleston, South Carolina street, Catfish Row. To fully understand their relationship, we need to eavesdrop upon their neighbors.

The soaring lullaby, "Summertime," whose very lyrics repeatedly stress upward motion, is sung by Clara to her baby. She reassures her child that all is well so long as his parents are there to take care of him.. But juxtaposed to this is a crap game that Sporting Life, the flashy personification of vice, urges the menfolk to enter. He as good as sings that life is itself a crap game. The men, for their part, focus upon macho camaraderie. Jake, Clara's husband, breaks up his buddies by taking the baby and singing his version of a lullaby, "A woman is a sometime thing," denigrating marriage and women in one fell swoop. Robbins joins the game against the wishes of his wife, Serena, complaining that Serena wants him to save his money for the "burying lodge," a kind of neighborhood cooperative. Portentously, Robbins prefers to "spend it while you is still alive and kickin'." Alas, when the game becomes rough -- Crown, a bullying fellow, becomes drunk on Sporting Life's proffered flask and accuses Robbins of cheating - Crown strikes Robbins with a cotton hook and leaves him for dead.

It is this opening scene that causes the relationship of Porgy and Bess to come about. Porgy is no saint: he has no qualms about gambling, singing right along that "a woman is a sometime thing"; in Act II it is said that he wasn't kind to children. As for Bess, according to her neighbor, Maria, she's a "liquor guzzlin' slut." When he's teased that he's soft on Bess, Porgy responds that he's never "swap two words with" her. But when no one else will take her in as Crown, her boyfriend, flees the murder scene, no words are necessary. Porgy's hand reaches out from his doorway; he pulls her into his room. When we see them again, she's a changed woman -- and he's a changed man, too.

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