When the Metropolitan first mounted its present production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice in 2007, I gave it a pass. I feared that this landmark work, so aesthetically fulfilling, dramatically gripping, and spiritually liberating if performed well, had already been dealt a mortal blow, at least locally, by the New York City Opera’s jab at it a few years earlier, directed by Martha Clarke and starring the falsettist Jochen Kowalski. Faced with the prospect of a fresh bout directed by the jokey choreographer Mark Morris, with another falsetto voice (David Daniels’) assigned to the passionate utterances of the title character, I didn’t really care to be witness to the knockout punch. And for reasons I can’t presently reconstruct, I missed an interim revival with Stephanie Blythe. This year, with the contralto Jamie Barton, whom I had not heard live, cast as Orfeo, I decided to give it a try.

This presentation was as close to a non-event as it is possible to come with the level of professional skill present at a major opera house. Still, it happened, and I was there (I saw the performance of Oct. 29). So, strictly for the record and before moving on to other things, this skeleton review:

Edition: 1762 unadorned, the hardest of all available choices to enliven—the most dependent on vivid music-making, riveting dramatic characterization, rapturous dancing, and evocative production.

Orchestra and conducting (Mark Wigglesworth, cond.): Underpowered for the house, bland and uncommitted, having neither the sharpness of attack and pungency of timbre of a good period ensemble nor the symphonic grandeur of a full, strongly led modern pit orchestra. Noticeably less present and alive than the similar grouping for Iphigénie en Tauride in 2007, under Louis Langrée.

Physical Production (Mark Morris, dir. & choreographer): Set (Allen Moyer, des.): For Acts 1 and 2 (the mourning, the descent, the Gates, Elysium—90 intermissionless minutes here), an ugly, multitiered metal structure that when deployed made more noise, relative to the music being played, than the notorious Lepage pile for Der Ring. On it: the chorus in seated rows, costumed in fancy period dress (Isaac Mizrahi, des.), as audience to what is “enacted” below. This audience said to include historically identifiable figures, but this not discernible from the front Balcony. Thus, the chorus of demons, shades, etc. not participants in the drama, though singing their assigned parts. A distancing device, a “perspective.” Below this, a semicircle of barren floor space. For Act 3 (the ascent, the reprieve and celebration), a slanting upward path on a stoney wall, with a barrier that conceals the performers’ bodies from waist down; then, as above.

Staging and “Personenregie“: A panto-choreo mélange of unremitting triviality. The members of the corps, dressed in contempo-cazh and tight little suits, scurry about, jump up and down, take movement-class lunges. Orfeo is given a few abstract signing gestures. Morris’s idiom was a somewhat better fit with Rameau’s Platée at the NYCO in 2000, when he at least had his own dancers to work with. But that opera is at best a moderately enjoyable piece of light entertainment, of about the same weight as, say, Anything Goes, but much older, and French, and with distinctly less memorable tunes.

There was once a syndicated tabloid columnist named Sidney Skolsky. He filled his two-or-three-times-weekly pieces with inside dope from the world of Hollywood, including certain items that didn’t necessarily elevate the personal reputations or professional judgment of some of its citizens, and always ended with “But don’t get me wrong—I love Hollywood.” Not wanting to be gotten wrong, and worried that some of you might take me for an anti-Porgy contrarian, I need to stipulate up front that I really do like Porgy and Bess, and I really am glad that the Metropolitan Opera has scored a badly needed smash hit with its new production of it. Yet, much as I like the opera I see and hear in my imagination, and enjoy many of its numbers along the way, it always somehow leaves me unfulfilled, sometimes even empty. On this occasion, it also had me feeling guilty, since the truth is that despite the presence of an abundance of talent and hard work, and commitment to putting the work over as a grand opera, I grew impatient and fidgety as the long evening unwound, and experienced some of that same emptiness at the close. So what I’m going to write here is not so much a review as a series of notes on Porgy and the production, mostly in a spirit of inquiry.

First, though, I must recommend to you the essay-review of the production by Joseph Horowitz in The American Scholar, along with his follow-ups in ArtsJournalBlogs, and the responses thereto. Horowitz is a great champion of the work, of Gershwin, and of the African-American seam in American music. His book “On My Way”: The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and “Porgy and Bess” is the best source I know on the genesis of the opera. The posts referred to above include (or provide links to) video and audio segments of Ruby Elzy (the original Serena), Billie Holliday, Nina Simone, John W. Bubbles (original Sportin’ Life), and Lawrence Tibbett singing Porgy excerpts, as well as eloquent written comments by the bass-baritone Kevin Deas (a veteran of many Porgy performances) on the necessity of playing the part as a cripple, as envisioned by the creators. And since Horowitz had a better time with the Met performance than I did, his remarks provide an alternate view of that, as well.

1. In my youth (preadolescence into early 20s), I loved Porgy unreservedly. But that was because I got to know its major “highlights” (and what a succession of songs!) through their first-ever recordings, the album of 78s issued by RCA Victor soon after the opera’s premiere at the Alvin Theatre. Recorded at New York’s Liederkranz Hall in three sessions in October of 1935, the album starred Tibbett and the Met soprano Helen Jepson, with a studio orchestra and chorus led in two of the sessions by the premiere production’s conductor, Alexander Smallens, and in the third (matinee day at the Alvin?) by Nathaniel Shilkret, a veteran Gershwinian and frequent Victor studio conductor. Gershwin supervised the sessions and authorized the results. Tibbett and Jepson sang the solos of all the principals (Porgy, Jake, Sportin’ Life; and Bess, Clara, Serena, respectively). Since Tibbett remains to this day the most compelling singeractor America has produced; the rather underrated Jepson (see my post of 1/4/19, MIA: Gounod’s “Faust”) sang quite beautifully; and since I didn’t yet know the show well enough to see anything wrong with the procedure, I simply went with the emotional power and atmosphere of the records, and took them for Porgy.

Owing to an unusual pileup of teaching obligations, I have re-scheduled today’s post, “Notes on Porgy,” to Sunday, Nov. 3. It examines the Gershwins’ and Heywards’ unique work, its problems of form and the controversies that often accompany it, in the light of the Metropolitan Opera’s ambitious new production. Apologies for the delay.

C.L.O.