Customer Reviews

Masterworks Heritage Edition - Gershwin: Porgy & Bess

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Every one of the Masterworks Heritage CD's I've bought are more than just worthwhile. First, the artwork in the enclosed booklets is from the original releases; then, of course, the historical magic of these recordings works like a charm. PORGY AND BESS, arguably the finest American opera ever written and certainly one of the Twentieth Century's most melodic and moving pieces of musical theatre is given a rich treatment in this set of two Sony CD's. Some fans call it a musical comedy and others insist it is a true opera. No matter. With a first-rate cast PORGY AND BESS works well in venues as different as Radio City Music Hall is from the Metropolitan Opera House. I have seen and loved it in both of these places.

The cast of this 1951 studio recording could hardly be bettered: Lawrence Winters and Camilla Williams are wonderful in the title roles and Avon Long practically owns the major supporting role of 'Sportin' Life.' Lehman Engel is for now and always one of the greatest Broadway conductors and the J. Rosamond Johnson Chorus works hard to great effect, singing and acting all of the characters who live in Catfish Row. There are numerous photographs and original designs within the liner notes and even the CD's, themselves, are cleverly made to duplicate the look of the original LP's.

If you've really never heard all of PORGY AND BESS this is a good recording to start with. There are more modern recordings with much better sound (I particularly like the one from Glyndebourne, England on EMI) and this set is obviously abridged, but it has most of the great music from the 'hit tunes' like "Summertime" and "I Got Plenty Of Nuttin'" to the lesser known "Oh, I Can't Sit Down!" and "Ha-da-da, ha-da-da." The score and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin and Du Bose Hayward work perfectly to make one of the true glories of modern musical theatre. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

.....there ARE other recordings of the work that are just as good. The only recording which truly comes across as stiff is the 1976 Lorin Maazel-conducted version ---the man simply doesn't seem to understand jazzy rhythms (he positively murders "A Woman Is A Sometime Thing") and Willard White uses his voice considerably better in the Simon Rattle Glyndebourne recording and video. On this 1951 mono recording conducted by Lehman Engel, Lawrence Winters is an excellent Porgy, especially good when you consider that he is using only his voice for characterization,and not his facial expression as well,as Willard White does in the video.

There are three excellent recordings of "Porgy" which give you a true sense of being "onstage" and not just at a recording session--the Houston Opera version,the Glyndebourne version,and this one,which,remarkably,actually IS only a studio production,and not a recording of a staged production. The singers sound remarkably close to the microphone,but much of the orchestral detail so easily heard in the stereo recordings is lost here--in fact,the orchestra sounds almost off-mike while the singing is actually going on. Several performances here do sound more "realistic",because some deliberately untrained voices have been used to lend more atmosphere. One that works especially well is J.Rosamond Johnson as Frazier (from the original Broadway cast) who,by this time had almost totally lost his singing voice and instead uses much of his acting ability to recreate much of his performance.

There is one big drawback to this production and that is that this is the standard performing version used in 1951, with approximately 45 minutes of the opera cut. Some sensitive listeners might notice that because this recording was made in less politically correct times, the Southern African-American dialect is much more exaggerated, and the use of words like "boss" when the inhabitants of Catfish Row address a white person tends to stand out more. At times,the characterizations in this version tend to sound much more like something out of "Gone With The Wind" than in later recordings; in fact, J.Rosamond Johnson's Frazier comes perilously close to sounding like he's doing the old radio program "Amos n' Andy". Otherwise,though,this is a highly enjoyable version.

Thank you, Sony, for remastering and re-releasing this towering, exciting, unbeatable recording of America's greatest opera (or is it a musical?).

The singing cast is excellent and the orchestra, under the great Lehman Engel's direction, catches every ounce of musical genius and theatrical excitement in the Gershwins' immortal score.

Avoid those stiff overblown operatic recordings, along with all those jazz and pop "adaptations" of bits of the score. This is the real thing. In addition, the packaging and notes are beautiful, made to look like the original 1950s double album in miniature.

If you don't love this, feel free to send me an abusive e-mail. But if you love Gershwin done right, you'll love this.

Regardless of its age and numerous technical drawbacks, this is probably the definitive treatment of Porgy and Bess. Several of the featured singers were in the original production, and the quality of their work has not diminished. Most important, it is presented as a piece of theater, not a multi-voiced concert. It is a drama, perhaps a tragedy, with emotional depth and developed characters. While adpatations were made from the original score, these changes were penned by Ira Gershwin himself. The vulnerable masculinity of Porgy is perfectedly captured; and Camilla Williams as Bess is nothing short of exquisite. Warren Coleman (one of the original cast) has a power and rawness that has yet to be matched. Undoubtedly, the crime of the performance is the times in which the recording was produced. The soloists and voices were among the finest in America; and all were denied their proper due and opportunities because of pervasive racism. Prohibited from performing in other operas, they at least come fully into their own in this hallmark recording.

theoretically this set should be rejected out of hand: it has nearly an hour worth of cuts; it is a mono-recording with frequent hissing; it bowdlerises the libretto in the specious interest of 'ethics'; it is full of sound-effects of doubtful authenticity.

In practice, this is probably the greatest recording of Gershwin's masterpiece we have. Maybe it's the quality of singing, giving the opera a rich, gospel warmth. Maybe it's Engel's brilliant conducting, alive to Gershwin's modernism (which sees tonality constantly teetering on collapse) and yet more aware than most of the work's popular origins, giving it an overwhelming, rythmic energy rarely found in 'classical' interpretations, while revealing 'Bess, you is my woman now' to be, along with Tristan and Isolde's, the greatest love duet in opera.

I think it's the sound effects I decried earlier. 'Porgy and Bess' is the first great opera where community and milieu are of equal, if not more, importance to the central story - every plot point is rooted in the life and rituals of the community, and operatic cliches - a gambling scene; a dual; a Mephistophelean temptation etc. - are given new life in this context. goddard Lieberson's brilliant, atmospheric production makes you genuinely feel the unfolding of a community's life - its joys, tragedies, hopes, fears, loves, hates - revealing 'Porgy and Bess' to be the one truly verisimo opera in a genre of artificial pretenders.

Porgy and Bess is unarguably the Greatest American Opera. There are two viable performance editions, what Gershwin wrote, complete, absolutely NO CUTS ALLOWED (see Houstan Grand Opera recording on RCA) and what Gershwin sanctioned for cuts for the original Broadway run, recently recorded by John Maucieri. This recording is neither of these, it is based on the complete score with major cuts. These cuts do serious damage to the piece. So do the cuts that Gershwin sanctioned for Broadway, but at least the composer was involved with the cuts. What Gershwin wrote was a grand opera on the scale of the smaller Wagner operas with more arias and set pieces. When it is cut, the rich tapestry of life on Catfish row suffers and the focus shifts to the Porgy--Bess--Crown relationship with Sportin Life as a major observer. With all that said, this is a great recording, with each and every singer magnificently portraying their characters. These are great artists who should have had major careers but with color bariers on all the major opera houses, it was not to be. How I wish these artists had recorded the work, complete or at least with fewer devistating cuts. How I long to hear Helen Dowdy sing Struttin Style. This was what was being performed as Porgy and Bess in the 1950s. THANK GOD we know better now. Still a worthwhile recording for the principals who lived in these roles for many years. I grew up with it, and it sits proudly on my shelf next to Houston Grand Opera and Glynborne, all important versions.

This album was a labour of love for Goddard Lieberson at Columbia records. And a daring pospect too: an expensive 3 - record set of Gershwin's folk opera. Well cast and recorded with vivid theatricality, the was in fact the only complete version of PORGY in circulation until 1976 when both London and RCa offered new note complete versions that restored much of the score Gershwin was forced to cut between the Boston premiere and the opening night on Broadway. (The RCA set taken from the Houston Grand Opera production is the one to get. No other PORGY before or since can touch it.)

This older album preserves the edited text (but does restore "The Buzzard Song.") The edits actually make the whole thing flow faster and make for a very enjoyable listening experience. The cast, chorus and orchestra are all first rate. The sound is pretty good considering the limitations of mono recording in 1951. Strangely, as of this writing the set appears to be deleted.

There are also a variety of Jazz interpretations. A strange album with Mel Torme and Frances Faye on Bethlehem, a highly prized album with Lena Horne and Harry Belafonte, and albums by Sammy Davis Jr and Caremen MacRae, Ella Fitzgerald, and Miles Davis.

Sammy Davis also appeared in the 1959 Samual Goldwyn film version with Sidney Poitier and Dorthy Dandridge. The film was withdrawn from circulation by the Gershwin estate in 1974 and has rarely been seen since. The Columbia Records "soundtrack" album was briefly available from SONY on CD but it too has been withdrawn. (Strangely, contract problems prevented Sammy Davis Jr from appearing on that album and his songs were redone for the record by Cab Calloway!) It is still the preferred version of "highlights" from the score for many listeners who enjoy the well-sung program and lush orchestrations.

I grew up with this album on LP's. My gratitude to SONY for its re-release. I thot, more than 40 years ago when I found it in the sale bin in an Omaha record store, that it was perfection. No performance since comes close.

Plenty of old stage and soundtrack recordings for sale. However, this one is unique in that it was created for the "ear" as a sound recording and not taken from a Broadway or screen performance. Printed support materials enhance your immediate enjoyment of this work, even for those previously unaquainted with the Porgy & Bess story. Consider this was recorded in 1951, and it is a further testament to the technical and artistic expertise that went into its' making.

I first owned the LP version of this performance way back in the early sixties. I loved it then, and somewhere along the way I passed it on to someone else. Big mistake. After years of sojourning with other performances (Rattle, Maazel, the later Warfield/Price version, the original cast album, and some other fine -- but little known -- excerpts albums (a rare one with Laverne Hutcherson and Margaret Tynes is well worth finding). Finally I got a used version through Amazon from a collector in the UK, and I'm listening to it right now.

As a former conductor myself, I'd have to say this is the best conducted version. Lehman Engel was an excellent musician and knows how to make the music move without pushing it. From listening to this anew, I really appreciate how he seems to understand singers. And what singers they are. Lawrence Winters (Porgy) studied early in his training with Todd Duncan, the first Porgy. Camilla Williams was a distinguished soprano who enjoyed a major career in Europe. Avon Long has always been my favorite Sportin Life, and this was where I first heard him. He's wonderful! The entire cast is remarkably strong.

I will keep all my Porgy versions. They each have advantages of completeness or outstanding individual performances, superior orchestras, etc. But with all its cuts, I think this first effort at a complete recorded performance remains my favorite version of Porgy and Bess.