Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

Song’ and other of his passages were removed at George’s suggestion.”37 Edward Jablonski explains, “Unlike recent productions of Porgy and Bess, the 1935 production had but one Porgy. So ‘Buzzard Song’ was among the first cut, in order to provide [Todd] Duncan with a chance to breathe between songs.”38

There is little doubt that Heyward and the brothers Gershwin (mainly, of course, George) agreed to relocate the buzzard number prior to the composition of the short score that served as the foundation of the published piano-vocal version used in rehearsal. It can also be determined that those most involved in the production, particularly the composer and the director, agreed to cut the “Buzzard Song,” perhaps on the eve of the New York premiere. Presumably the cut was made primarily for the practical reason that the opera was forty-five minutes too long and that Porgy already had two big numbers in this scene.

But the buzzard would light again with remarkable tenacity. Even during the initial run of the Broadway Porgy and Bess, the discarded “Buzzard Song” would appear among the first recorded excerpts from the opera. It was ironic that the singer on the recording—Lawrence Tibbett—was white. According to Gershwin, Tibbett was the likely candidate for a Metropolitan Opera production rather than the original Porgy, Todd Duncan.39 Duncan himself sang the “Buzzard Song” along with “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” (with Marguerite Chapman) in the Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts organized by Merle Armitage in February 1937, and he included it along with other excerpts for a recording released in 1942.40

The “Buzzard Song” was also one of the few items cut from the Boston tryouts to resurface on the first nearly complete Porgy recording (and first published libretto in English) in 1951 produced by Goddard Lieberson and conducted by Lehman Engel, with Lawrence Winters and Camilla Williams singing the title roles.41 And the song was among those portions reinstated for the Blevins Davis-Robert Breen revival that premiered in Dallas in 1952 and toured Europe later that year.42 But in 1952 the buzzard did not appear until the final scene of the opera, perhaps to symbolize Porgy’s bad luck in losing Bess.43

Does the “Buzzard Song” belong in future productions of Porgy and Bess? The central practical issue that led to its original omission was not really its length (less than four minutes, including the recitative with the lawyer Archdale) but the strain on Porgy’s voice. Does this mean that if several Porgys had been available or if the Broadway equivalent of Lauritz Melchior had surfaced, the composer might have fought for its inclusion? Not necessarily.

The artistic aspects are naturally more problematic than the practical ones. Can we interpret Gershwin’s remarks in 1935—“The reason I did not submit this work to the usual sponsors of opera in America was that I hoped to have developed something in American music that would appeal to the many rather than to the cultured few”—to justify the removal of forty-five expendable minutes?44 What are present-day audiences to make of Gershwin’s contemporaries, many directly involved in the first production, who without exception concluded that Porgy and Bess was better off with the cuts, including that of the “Buzzard Song”?

Clearly, even if Gershwin strove to approximate the “beauty of Meistersinger,” he did not want to approximate its length, at least not on Broadway.45 But opera epicureans used to Die Meistersinger and desirous of savoring every possible morsel of a work might eagerly welcome back the deleted forty-five minutes and perhaps endorse portions of the opera that never made it even to Boston, for example, the reconciliation duet between Bess and Serena in act III, scene 1.46 The Houston Opera producers, who felt no remorse at dividing the work into two long acts rather than the specified three in order to save overtime labor costs, perhaps did not even consider the option of cutting the “Buzzard Song.”

Several years before the Cleveland and Houston recordings were issued, Wayne Shirley, an authority on the opera and a persuasive advocate for a score that represents the composer’s intentions, wrote that the “Buzzard Song” “is always cut, since Porgy has two other strenuous numbers in the scene, and the work flows better for the cut.”47 And although he does not offer an artistic justification for deleting this particular song, Hamm, who contends, as we have seen, that “most cuts made for apparently practical reasons were of passages already questioned on artistic grounds,” would presumably support Fred Graham, who introduces Kiss Me, Kate with the line, “Yes, the cut’s good, leave it in.”48 In contrast to Shirley and Hamm, Wilfrid Mellers has argued that the “Buzzard Song” constitutes “the turning-point of the opera, for it forces him [Porgy] to face up to reality and suffering…. The appearance of the buzzard marks Porgy’s realization of the significance of his love.”49

Some might argue for the retention of the “Buzzard Song” on musical grounds; others might conclude with equal justification that the song creates a dramatic intrusion. Certainly the “Buzzard Song” undermines the effect of a scene that otherwise successfully shows Porgy and Bess as fully accepted members of the Catfish Row community and, of course, illustrates their genuine and optimistic love. Because Porgy’s superstitious nature had been de-emphasized in the adaptation of play to opera, its sudden appearance in this scene, despite Porgy’s ultimate ability to conquer his fear, creates an ominous tone that the love duet “Bess, You Is My Woman Now” cannot overcome. Porgy’s extraordinary fear in act III, scene 2, when he learns that he must look on Crown’s face or serve time in jail, is generated by his sense of guilt at having murdered Crown rather than by irrational superstition. (For this reason, its placement in act III of the Davis-Breen libretto makes artistic sense despite the absence of historical justification.) To historians troubled by the dramatic effect of the song, it comes as a relief to learn that the composer had agreed to and perhaps even suggested