American Masterpieces: Porgy and Bess at State Theatre.

Happy birthday, Porgy and Bess!

2010 marks the 75^th anniversary of this landmark work and there are plenty of opportunities to catch it this year. And so you should! My opportunity was the great 75^th anniversary tour, presented by Michael Capasso, at the State Theater in New Brunswick Thursday night.

Porgy and Bess (music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward, based upon Heyward’s novel Porgy) opened in 1935 in New York…on Broadway. Yes, originally Porgy and Bess ran on Broadway (for 124 performances) and it was several decades before opera companies performed the work. Today, though, OPERA America reports that Porgy and Bess was the most frequently performed North American opera of the 2008-2009 season. This spring alone, five opera companies are mounting productions (Opera Carolina, Virginia Opera, Washington National Opera, El Paso Opera and San Antonio Opera). According to OPERA America’s Schedule of Performances, since 1991, 45 opera companies have mounted productions of Porgy and Bess. Porgy and Bess occupies an important place in American cultural history, whether you consider it an opera or a musical. Or even jazz, as in the case of the 1957 recording by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. The first American opera company to mount a production was Houston Grand Opera in 1976, whose recording won a Grammy Award.

NJ State Opera’s Verdi Requiem

“I don’t really know anything about this piece,” Jonathan said, before we entered the Great Auditorium. “Just wait,” I replied. “If nothing else, I guarantee that you’ve heard the ‘Dies irae’ before. Like a lot

Outside the Great Auditorium

of classical music, you just didn’t know you knew it.”

I know the Verdi Requiem pretty well, just not as well as those by Mozart or Faure, both of which I’ve sung before. But I’ve never heard Verdi’s Requiem live before. And it was the ‘Dies irae’ (the first, full time through, not the later iterations) that gave me both of my favorite moments of the evening:

Favorite moment #1: The sound in the Great Auditorium is amazing. I must have heard that from about 8 different people before I went to Ocean Grove for the first time and everyone was right. David Patrick Stearns, classical music critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, wrote, “Leonard Bernstein reportedly compared its acoustics to Carnegie Hall’s. An exaggeration? Not when you’re sitting so far from the stage that you can’t see which singers’ lips are moving but their sound seems to be coming from right next to you.” But the best part was when trumpeters from the New Jersey State Opera Orchestra played the ‘Dies irae” from either side of the empty balcony, halfway down the hall. The sound enveloped you and putting the trumpets in this unusual place took great advantage of the space.

Inside the Great Auditorium

Favorite moment #2: Definitely watching everyone jump the first time the timpani (kettle drums) came in during the ‘Dies irae.’ The sound in the hall is really live, which is great for the singing. But it also transforms the timpani hits into startling gunshots. The musical themes from this section are repeated several times throughout the work, but luckily everyone was better prepared for the “gunshots” by the second time around.

Favorite moment honorable mention: At the end of the performance, after the bows were taken and flowers handed out, Maestro Tramm motioned for everyone to stop clapping and sit back down. Then the orchestra played John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever,” which was a lot of fun. And not only because it reminds me of playing it at every spring concert with the Fordham University Concert Band…

Opera’s Appeal

It’s funny. When I tell people I work in opera, or that I’m going to an opera performance, they do a double take and say, “Wait, sorry…did you just say ‘opera?’” Yup, that’s what I said. Opera.

But why do I like opera? I suppose it’s partially because I studied music and attended classical music and opera performances while growing up.

But it’s more than that.

There’s just something about opera that really speaks to me. The music can be so passionate, clever, complex and fascinating. The voices are often huge and real. The craft and musicianship that goes into an excellent performance is unbelievable.

So, for me, it’s the music. No, wait – it’s the voices themselves. Oh, but then again, the stories can be touching, timeless and intense. And I can’t forget to mention the draw of the art’s history, language, sets and costumes and the singers’ acting.

OK. I think the next time someone asks me what I love about opera, I’ll just say: “Everything.”