After that performance, it was some thirty years before I saw Porgy again, though I kept hearing the songs and some of the new recordings, and following the lengthening chain of argumentation on the opera, which always revolved around two questions. The first was “What is it?”—that is, what form should it take, what sorts of singers should sing it, and how much of its wealth of material should be included? The second was some version, ever-changing, of “Is it good for (fair to, respectful to, accurate about, etc.) African-Americans culture?” And, as an implied third question, “If not, how should it be performed?” These queries have nagged at all my subsequent Porgy experiences: the Met’s earlier production; The New York City Opera’s presentation, which I touch on in Opera as Opera; two music-theatre undertakings (a Trevor Nunn-directed version at London’s Savoy Theatre, and the American Repertory Theatre’s on Broadway), and now the Met’s new one.

I like to try to look at a work for what I think it actually is, rather than for what I (or anyone else) would like it to be. That is, unavoidably, an act of interpretation on my part. But at least the interpretation is aimed at hearing what the work seeks to tell me, like it or not, rather than what I (or that anyone else) might seek to say through it. I believe that all interpreters should make the same attempt—their opinions, their tastes, their “agendas” must give way to it. So when it comes to judgment, I ask whether or not that attempt has been honestly made, and if so, to what extent I think it has succeeded. My notes on Porgy, on this major new effort by the Met, and on the nagging questions, are offered in that light.

4. Stereotype: A “fixed or conventional expression . . . having no individuality, as though cut from a mold;” states my dictionary. And then, fortuitously for our discussion, there follows “as, the Negro is too often portrayed as a stereotype.” So we’re dealing with the stereotype of stereotyping, as it were. It’s what some black interpreters and commentators have complained of in Porgy from the outset, and what some interpreters have tried to counteract in revisionist productions and/or performances. I think it’s a red herring, but maybe it can afford us a useful route into the characters and story of Porgy and Bess. In any stage work of stature (a status it will not attain if its principal characters as written are “conventional” and have “no individuality”), whether or not something comes across as stereotypical depends in great part on how it is performed. In Porgy, the character who can most reliably be counted on to come across as a stereotype is The Detective. His is the most prominent of the parts that—even in a maximal through-composed version—are left unsung, spoken while white. ^(I)It’s not that The Detective will ever exactly win our sympathies. In his two brief appearances, he hauls Peter, the elderly Honey Man, off to jail as a material witness, badgers the newly widowed Serena, and (it says in the text) kicks in Porgy’s door. But consider his job. Two murders are committed on Catfish Row. He does need witnesses, and while the community is willing to ‘fess up about the fugitive Crown, it closes ranks around Porgy. The Detective’s suspicions about who saw what are entirely justified. When he accuses first Serena, then Porgy, of lying, he’s right, and he’s seen all this before. The man given this assignment is not going to be Mr. Sensitivity, but if played by an actor of weight who’s taking his job and the circumstances seriously, his scenes can have a lifelike texture. His work would then have to be countered with much more grown-up acting than I’ve ever seen done by his fellow thespians in these sequences, with their musical-comedy innocence-feigning shtick. That is stereotyping, and embarrassing, not as much for people of color as for professional singing actors.