George Gershwin by Walter Rimler

Author:Walter Rimler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Illinois Press

One day we were in the midst of hard work in Serena's Prayer Scene, he walked in and immediately disappeared into the back of the dark theater where he quietly took his seat. The director, Rouben Mamoulian, was working like mad with the actors, setting the entrances, positions, the music, and action. This is a very quiet scene, one of profound religious fervor. We singers were very tired, tired enough fortunately to set up the exact atmosphere required for the prayer. It must have been our tenth consecutive trial when I sang the following words about my Bess, “I think that maybe she gonna sleep now, a whole week gone and now she ain't no better.” Serena, the pious old lady of Catfish Row, came over to me in order to offer a prayer for the sick woman, and so the prayer began. Miss Elzy [Serena] went down on her knees as if her own mother had been ill for weeks; she felt the need of prayer. Two seconds of silence intervened that seemed like hours, and presently there rose the most glorious tones and wails with accompanying amens and hallelujahs for our sick Bess that I ever hope to experience. This particular scene should have normally moved into the scene of the Street Cries, but it did not. It stopped there. The piano accompaniment ceased, every actor (and there were sixty-five of them) had come out of his rest position, sitting at the edge of his seat and R.M. was standing before us quietly moving his inevitable cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, his face lighted to sheer delight in realization, and then, George Gershwin, like a ghost from the dark rows of the Guild Theater appeared before the footlights. He simply could not stand it. He knew then that he had put down on paper accurately and truthfully something from the depth of soul of a South Carolina Negro woman who feels the need of help and carries her troubles to her God.10

Toward the end of rehearsals, the Theatre Guild's publicity department began to worry that audiences would think that Porgy the opera was actually a revival of Porgy the play. To prevent such a misconception Heyward came up with the title Porgy and Bess. He liked the idea of a new pair of operatic lovers who would take their place beside Tristan und Isolde and Pelléas et Mélisande. This satisfied the guild, but they had another concern: that the word “opera” would scare off customers. In 1935, Broadway theatergoers were already in short supply. Only about half as many musicals opened in the 1935–36 season as in the last pre-Depression year of 1928–29. But Gershwin would not budge on this point. He insisted that Porgy and Bess be correctly labeled as an opera. He did, however, allow the guild to mitigate the scary word by preceding it with “folk.” From then on, it would be called a folk opera, although no one could say for certain just what a folk opera was.

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