Performances of “Porgy and Bess,” which premiered in 1935, are licensed by the Gershwin family, which specifies an all-black cast.
Thursday, February 21, 2019
The Met to hire all-black chorus for 'Porgy and Bess,' per estate mandate
Performances of “Porgy and Bess,” which premiered in 1935, are licensed by the Gershwin family, which specifies an all-black cast.
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3 comments:
I am not very familiar with Porgy and Bess aside from “Summertime,” which I love. I’m happy to hear that the Met is performing Porgy and Bess as intended, and I would expect nothing less, but I am more surprised to hear about the unauthorized, mostly white performance at the Hungarian State Opera. They didn’t dive too deep into this in the article, but it feels like an important thing to note. Given that this production is still kept in the Gershwin family, their desires weigh even heavier than they would had the rights been in the possession of somebody else, so to perform unauthorized as well as against the cultural integrity of the show feels even more disrespectful.
As for the Met, once again, I’m glad to hear that they are performing it as intended, but I disagree with Mr. Peter Gelb. He stated that to hire an all-black outside chorus makes things more complicated, but I can’t imagine how much more complicated that could make things. Maybe more expensive, since they would have two choirs in the same building, but I don’t think that finding an all-black choir in New York City could be very complicated. I also fail to see how 6 black choir members out of 81 total in their resident choir qualifies as “many” as Gelb states.
I agree with Iana on many of her above statements. It's a little strange to read a comment about how the number of black chorus members has increased from three to six over a roughly 34 year time span. I mean, I guess any progress is good progress, but the entire chorus is about 80 people. That means that maybe only 13% of the chorus is black (this of course doesn't mean that there aren't other people of color in the chorus). This was followed by a statement of Gelb, who said that the Met has been doing colorblind casting in many of its productions. While this may extend itself to principal singers, it hasn't seemed to make its way into the chorus line. He also mentioned how complicated it is to work with having two chorus'. There are two different huge chorus' practicing in the same space, needing to be paid - so there are a lot of logistical challenges to performing the opera with an all-black chorus, because it's separate of their main chorus. I really applaud the Met and a lot of the work its done, but especially when the specific challenges that are arising from them doing Porgy and Bess, I think it should allow them, as an establishment to really examine how they are doing on different fronts of representation.
Though I am not surprised that The Met has been so white washed, I am upset by how much the issue is for The Met to cast a show correctly. I don’t understand why having an all-black chorus is more complicated as per what the general manager said. I’m sure that a place like the Met can find 80 black opera singers. I am surprised that the script specifies an all-black chorus and yet only had 3 or 6 the chorus be black. The article talks about how The Met is a colorblind casting organization, however, this isn’t enough. I think just with how we are hard-wired, a primarily white organization is going to be full of primary white performers. I think casting needs to be color conscious, meaning that the cast agencies are making an active choice to pay attention to whom the agency is casting and looking at. This would ensure more diverse casts are created instead of trying to have things come out in the wash so to speak.
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