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Cheryl Crawford's Porgy and Bess: Navigating Cultural Hierarchy in 1941

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2016

CHRISTOPHER LYNCH
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Abstract

This article analyzes the revisions producer Cheryl Crawford and her team made to Porgy and Bess for a revival that opened in Maplewood, New Jersey, in 1941 and moved to Broadway in early 1942. Crawford's revisions addressed criticisms of the opera that had first been issued at its premiere in 1935, especially complaints about its dramatic viability and the appropriateness of African American performers in opera. The revisions distanced Porgy and Bess from the practices of the Metropolitan Opera House, which the press routinely criticized as antiquated and dull. They also reduced the amount of operatic recitative, which Crawford saw as “out of keeping with the black milieu,” strategically reserving the device for specific moments that played into the stereotype of African Americans as naturally musical. In her marketing of the show, Crawford reframed the critical discussion of Porgy and Bess by deflecting attention away from disputes over genre and race and toward the structural and formal qualities of the work. These strategies, which were aimed at attracting a broad audience with divergent values and aesthetic preferences, proved successful. Whereas the 1935 production was a commercial failure, Crawford's Porgy and Bess became a hit, marking a crucial step toward the establishment of the work in the American operatic repertoire.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Society for American Music , Volume 10 , Issue 3 , August 2016 , pp. 331 - 363
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Music 2016 

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References

References

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Cheryl Crawford Papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
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Crawford, Richard. “It Ain't Necessarily Soul: Gershwin's Porgy and Bess as a Symbol.” Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical 8 (1972): 17–38.Google Scholar
Crawford, Richard. “Where Did Porgy and Bess Come From?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36, no. 4 (Spring 2006): 697–734.Google Scholar
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Guzski, Carolyn. “New Evidence on Artists of Color at the Metropolitan Opera.” Paper presented at the Joint Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Society for Music Theory, New Orleans, 2 November 2012.Google Scholar
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Harris, David. “The Original Four Saints in Three Acts .” The Drama Review 26, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 101–30.Google Scholar
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Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Christopher. “ Porgy and Bess: An American Wozzeck .” Journal of the Society for American Music 1, no. 1 (February 2007): 1–28.Google Scholar
Sheean, Vincent. Oscar Hammerstein I: The Life and Exploits of an Impresario. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.Google Scholar
Shirley, Wayne. “The Original 1935 Production Version of Porgy and Bess.” Liner notes for The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Conducted by John Mauceri. Decca B0007431-02, 2006, CD.Google Scholar
Starr, Lawrence. “Toward a Reevaluation of Porgy and Bess .” American Music 2, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 25–37.Google Scholar
Gershwin, George. Porgy and Bess. Libretto by Dubose Heyward. Lyrics by Dubose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Vocal Score. New York: Gershwin Publishing Corporation, 1935.Google Scholar
Alexander Smallens Papers, Music Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
Cheryl Crawford Papers, Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.Google Scholar
George and Ira Gershwin Collection, Library of Congress.Google Scholar
Affron, Charles, and Jona Affron, Mirella. Grand Opera: The Story of the Met. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Allen, Ray. “An American Folk Opera? Triangulating Folkness, Blackness, and Americanness in Gershwin and Heyward's Porgy and Bess .” Journal of American Folklore 117, no. 465 (Summer 2004): 243–61.Google Scholar
Alpert, Hollis. The Life and Times of Porgy and Bess: The Story of an American Classic. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990.Google Scholar
Ashbrook, William and Powers, Harold. Puccini's Turandot: The End of the Great Tradition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991.Google Scholar
Block, Geoffrey. Enchanted Evenings: The Broadway Musical from Show Boat to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Brown, Gwynne Kuhner. “Problems of Race and Genre in the Critical Reception of Porgy and Bess.” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 2006.Google Scholar
Cone, John Frederick. Oscar Hammerstein's Manhattan Opera Company. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964.Google Scholar
Crawford, Cheryl. One Naked Individual: My Fifty Years in the Theatre. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1977.Google Scholar
Crawford, Richard. “It Ain't Necessarily Soul: Gershwin's Porgy and Bess as a Symbol.” Anuario Interamericano de Investigacion Musical 8 (1972): 17–38.Google Scholar
Crawford, Richard. “Where Did Porgy and Bess Come From?” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 36, no. 4 (Spring 2006): 697–734.Google Scholar
Cruse, Harold. The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual. New York: William Morrow, 1967.Google Scholar
Davis, Andrew. Il Trittico, Turandot, and Puccini's Late Style. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Everett, William A. “Formulating American Operetta in 1924: Friml's Rose Marie and Romberg's The Student Prince .” American Music Research Center Journal 11 (2001): 15–33.Google Scholar
Everett, William A. “Sigmund Romberg and the American Operetta of the 1920s.” Arti Musices 26, no. 1 (1995): 49–64.Google Scholar
Guzski, Carolyn. “American Opera at the Metropolitan, 1910–1935: A Contextual History and Critical Survey of Selected Works.” Ph.D. diss., City University of New York, 2001.Google Scholar
Guzski, Carolyn. “New Evidence on Artists of Color at the Metropolitan Opera.” Paper presented at the Joint Annual Meeting of the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, and Society for Music Theory, New Orleans, 2 November 2012.Google Scholar
Hamm, Charles. “The Theatre Guild Production of Porgy and Bess .” Journal of the American Musicological Society 40, no. 3 (Fall 1987): 495–532.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harris, David. “The Original Four Saints in Three Acts .” The Drama Review 26, no. 1 (Spring 1982): 101–30.Google Scholar
Johnson, John Andrew. “Gershwin's ‘American Folk Opera’: The Genesis, Style, and Reputation of Porgy and Bess.” Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1996.Google Scholar
Kerman, Joseph. Opera as Drama, 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956.Google Scholar
Monod, David. “Disguise, Containment and the Porgy and Bess Revival of 1952–1956.” Journal of American Studies 35, no. 2 (August 2001): 275–312.Google Scholar
O'Leary, James. “ Oklahoma!, ‘Lousy Publicity,’ and the Politics of Formal Integration in the American Musical Theater.” Journal of Musicology 31, no. 1 (Winter 2014): 139–82.Google Scholar
Nauert, Paul. “Theory and Practice in Porgy and Bess: The Gershwin–Schillinger Connection.” Musical Quarterly 78, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 9–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Noonan, Ellen. The Strange Career of Porgy and Bess: Race, Culture, and America's Most Famous Opera. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Pollack, Howard. George Gershwin: His Life and Work. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Reynolds, Christopher. “ Porgy and Bess: An American Wozzeck .” Journal of the Society for American Music 1, no. 1 (February 2007): 1–28.Google Scholar
Sheean, Vincent. Oscar Hammerstein I: The Life and Exploits of an Impresario. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1956.Google Scholar
Shirley, Wayne. “The Original 1935 Production Version of Porgy and Bess.” Liner notes for The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess. Nashville Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. Conducted by John Mauceri. Decca B0007431-02, 2006, CD.Google Scholar
Starr, Lawrence. “Toward a Reevaluation of Porgy and Bess .” American Music 2, no. 2 (Summer 1984): 25–37.Google Scholar
Gershwin, George. Porgy and Bess. Libretto by Dubose Heyward. Lyrics by Dubose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin. Vocal Score. New York: Gershwin Publishing Corporation, 1935.Google Scholar