WNO cast, staging bring fresh power and sympathy to Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”
Michael Sumuel and Brittany Renee star in Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess at Washington National Opera. Photo: Cory Weaver
Washington National Opera kicked off the celebration of its 70th anniversary, coming up in 2026, a little early. For the final production of the season, the company returned to that quintessential American opera, George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess, seen Friday night in the Kennedy Center Opera House. The WNO milestone next year will coincide with the theme chosen by the new KC leadership for 2026, “The Promise of the US,” marking America’s 250th birthday.
Gershwin’s only opera featured a libretto by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, based on the play version of Heyward’s novel Porgy (written with his wife, Dorothy). Set in Catfish Row, a fictionalized black neighborhood in Heyward’s native Charleston, South Carolina, it follows the love affair of Porgy, a disabled beggar with a heart of gold, and Bess, a beautiful young woman struggling to break free of her addictions, to cocaine, alcohol, and the abusive stevedore Crown.
Michael Sumuel, who had a fine solo turn with the National Symphony Orchestra last year, sang Porgy with exceptional musical and dramatic finesse. In his WNO debut, the bass-baritone showed the same vocal power as in his Santa Fe Opera debut in 2022, with a potent top range that weakened only toward the end of Act III. Leaning on a single large crutch to hobble around the stage, he radiated immense strength, both physical and moral.
His Bess, soprano Brittany Renee, made an equally impressive company debut. Her dulcet soprano reached up to powerful top notes in the duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” and generated profound sympathy in her blockbuster “I Loves You, Porgy” in Act II. Renee’s charismatic stage presence empowered her to embody both sides of this troublesome character, whiskey-swigging Jezebel and temporarily reformed saint.
The supporting cast proved no less effective, beginning with the tender Clara of Cafritz Young Artist Viviana Goodwin, who made each of three renditions of the opera’s best aria, “Summertime,” different and worthwhile, up to a shimmering high B. Soprano Amber R. Monroe made an exquisite Serena, singing “My Man’s Gone Now” with clarion force and emotional grit, at the funeral of her slain husband, Robbins, played more gently by Daniel Sampson.
Chauncey Packer as Sportin’ Life in Porgy and Bess. Photo: Cory Weaver
Chauncey Packer excelled in the character tenor role of Sportin’ Life, the flim-flamming drug dealer and gambler who finally convinces Bess to run off with him to New York. His combination of comic dance moves and vocal show never descended into cringeworthy caricature. Mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves, a beloved veteran of the WNO stage, gave blistering force to the role of Maria, especially her righteous condemnation of Sportin’ Life in “I hates yo’ struttin’ style,” a mixture of singing and outraged shout.
Kenneth Kellogg, another accomplished former Cafritz Young Artist, a menacing bass voice with an imposing frame to match, brought visceral danger to Crown. The rape scene on Kittiwah Island in Act II, when he carried the screaming Bess off the stage, proved absolutely chilling. Baritone Benjamin Taylor made a heroic Jake, Clara’s fisherman husband, and Marquita Raley-Cooper brought the house down with her outstanding cameo as the Strawberry Woman.
Kwamé Ryan, who is concluding his first season as music director of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra, made a splendid WNO debut at the podium. He coordinated the complex orchestration with panache, including the large choral scenes like “Oh, I Can’t Sit Down,” with the uniformly strong WNO Chorus under Steven Gathman. The saxophones added impressive power to the pit, and the banjo and colorful percussion heightened the score’s folksy effects.
Francesca Zambello revived her successful 2005 production, the WNO’s first of this American classic, to pleasing effect. Even with the usual cuts to the score, including the choral scene around the piano at the start of Act I, the opera still feels too long toward the end of Act III. The diagonal set of rusted corrugated metal and worn wooden doors made a convincing backdrop, with other walls flown in from above to create different settings (set design by Peter J. Davison).
Associate director Eric Sean Fogel’s dance choreography enlivened many scenes, given a more authentic update by associate choreographer Eboni Adams this time around. Dramatic lighting (designed by Mark McCullough and overseen in the revival by A.J. Guban) and sound punched up the drama of the hurricane scene, complete with the clatter of panels being blown loose from the set. Sierra Young’s fight choreography, in her WNO debut, made the stage combats much more believable than in 2005 as well.
All of these elements together went much farther in combatting the potential racial stereotypes in the opera, an unfortunate drawback of an all-white creative team creating a work about black characters. Scholar Naomi André, writing in a program note, has said Porgy and Bess “portrays black folks as gambling, drug-addicted murderers.” Such people, who are an unavoidable part of the story, are more strongly condemned by that community itself through the creative choices of this powerful staging.
Porgy and Bess runs through May 31, with a second cast, starring Reginald Smith Jr. and Alyson Cambridge, on alternating dates. kennedy-center.org
Photo: Cory Weaver
