Black opera: Struggle and strategy

The Broadway production of The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, now in its preview phase with Audra McDonald as Bess, has generated much buzz by fleshing out Dubose Heyward's original story. Praise for these "improvements" has been offset by a stinging op-ed rebuke from no less than Stephen Sondheim (which will probably generate even more ticket sales).

Meanwhile, Judith Anne Still, daughter of the composer William Grant Still, called on black singers to boycott performances of Porgy and Bess because, she contended, the white composer George Gershwin had "stolen" the music while operas by deserving black composers like her father languish in obscurity.

The Gershwin "theft" she referred to seemed to be more about writing in a style that borrowed from African American idioms than actual plagiarism. The idea of confining musicians to styles consistent with their ethnic heritage is as ludicrous as it is unenforceable.

But I doubt that this was Judith Anne Still's real complaint. More likely, she was responding to the continued phenomenon of white people taking aspects of black history and culture and profiting from them far more, in the same arenas, than black people do.

White help for The Help

A similar debate has arisen regarding the movie version of Kathryn Stockett's best-selling novel, The Help. When black history (that is, slavery and the Civil Rights era) is presented on screen, it often seems that there must be a focal white character or the project will be a financial failure. (In The Help, that white character is Skeeter, the aspiring young writer who launches her career by interviewing her white friends' domestic servants.)

The Help features some compelling actresses, black and white. Yet one of its black leads, the very talented Viola Davis, has been largely limited to roles as domestics and the downtrodden— with the exception of Madea Goes to Jail, in which writer/director Tyler Perry, cast her as a reformed hooker turned social worker. And of course Perry is black himself.

Many of the responses to Judith Anne Still's Facebook call for a black boycott of Porgy and Bess boiled down to one question: If we don't do Porgy and Bess, how do we earn a living?

Of Amistad and Malcolm X

Still's suggested response is: by making the presenters who hire you stage operas by black composers in addition to, or instead of, Porgy and Bess— works like Anthony Davis's Amistad or Malcolm X, Vanqui by Leslie Burrs or Troubled Island by William Grant Still. If black music lovers and performers alike demand it, the argument goes, the presenters will fall in line.

As strategic tactics go, this idea would probably work as well as the former Philadelphia School Superintendent David Hornbeck's suggestion that he and then-Mayor Ed Rendell lobby for more state funding by staging a hunger strike.

These are tough times for any musical work outside the very traditional (checked the offerings at the Met lately?). Unlike recitals, operas are expensive to produce. There's a lot of money to be lost by failing to cater to the masses. Porgy and Bess, on the other hand, is a guaranteed seller. I doubt it's going anywhere.

My "'niche within a niche'

Which is Still's point, I think: There is no Porgy and Bess without its black cast. Gershwin explicitly decreed it, and his heirs concur. If every black singer refused to perform Porgy, that might create some leverage. It will never happen, however. On Facebook, Judith Anne Still's call to action was echoed by exactly one person, as far as I could tell. The rest of us were more ambivalent.

The root of this ambivalence, at least for me, is my version of reality. As a black Classical musician, I struggle every day to survive in a niche within a niche. It's tough enough to interest white people in Classical music, much less black audiences. My bread and butter is collaborating, and I play whatever I'm paid to play, by whomever. I do play at least one piece by a black composer on almost all of my solo recitals, and my solo piano recordings are works of black composers.

Still, I can't help admiring the lucrative showcase that Porgy and Bess provides— in a much larger niche— for black singers. And I doubt that black singers enjoy the leverage to force white impresarios to produce black operas by threatening to boycott Porgy and Bess.

Indeed, why should you care whether operas by black composers are performed? The short answer is: If you can't attend black operas, you're being denied a whole new dimension of musical experience— one that reflects a uniquely American past. And if Porgy and Bess is the only black opera you've ever attended, you're being denied the opportunity to hear your favorite Porgys, Besses, Crowns and Sportin' Lifes sing other roles.

This isn't just about expanding opportunities for black singers and composers. It's about expanding opportunities for music audiences, black and white alike.♦


To read a follow-up commentary by Maria Thompson Corley, click here.