Two of Verdi’s epic opera protagonists, Aida and Othello, are African characters.
Its corpus is full of European composers for whom the exotic was often othered or treated with a jingoistic, pejorative gaze. Opera has not been historically known for diverse and ethical representation. Similarly, the Met’s selection of “Porgy and Bess” to open its 2019 to 2020 season provides a locus for deeper conversation on race and gender in art and beyond. While Sidney Poitier played Porgy, the disabled peddler protagonist, in the 1959 movie, Harry Belafonte famously refused, objecting to the opera’s perpetuating harmful stereotypes.Īt the same time, however, Gershwin’s insistence that the opera feature only an African-American cast and framing this profile of a poor African-American community as quintessentially American was itself a radical statement in his day. It is inescapably a story told through the eyes of the three white men and white women who wrote the novel, play, libretto and music. It is the story of a poor African-American community on the coast of South Carolina, speaking in the Gullah dialect, and every aspect of this opera has been scrutinized. Written in the 1930s, George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” has always been controversial. And as the Metropolitan Opera opens its new season with “Porgy and Bess,” opera can be a lens used to confront broader social questions of race, representation and community identity.
At its best, opera provides a window into the past and a mirror into our present. And yet the high drama and emotion, always a little extra, is also deeply human. From the outside, it appears to be a relic of Gilded Age opulence and irrelevant. Opera is an oft-maligned and misunderstood art form.
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