UIA Artists Shine in the Met's Porgy and Bess
- ebrown9879
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
The Metropolitan Opera's production of Porgy and Bess opened Friday, December 2 to rave reviews, with critics especially noting the "superb" and "supremely versatile" cast, which includes tenor Errin Duane Brooks as Mingo, tenor Chauncey Packer as Robbins and Crabman, tenor Norman Shankle as Peter, soprano Adrienne Danrich as Lily, and soprano Brittany Renee in the title role of Bess. (Porgy and Bess is also assistant directed by Kimille Howard.)
"But the biggest promotion in this cast went to soprano Brittany Renee, elevated from the peripheral role of Annie to a worthy star turn as the protagonist Bess...Gershwin’s original Bess, Ann Brown, was a young Juilliard student with exceptional powers of empathy and imagination. If Brittany Renee has a tad more performing experience than Brown did, her casting as Bess seemed to be in a similar spirit. Although she had soprano power to spare, as when she led the chorus in the spiritual “O, de Train Is at de Station,” it had to be muted in her ambivalent responses to Crown and Porgy, so that “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” became more of a circling dance with her crippled lover than an ecstatic love duet. One imagines Gershwin would have approved of the contrast between Bess’s smoky reprise of “Summertime” after the fatal storm and the clarity of Clara’s original."
"Alfred Walker and Brittany Renee topped a superb cast in this revival...Brittany Renee is a fascinating Bess, torn between animal lust and the lure of drugs versus her yearning for a decent life with Porgy. She glowed physically and vocally when joining Walker in ‘Bess, You Is my Woman Now’, but aged before one’s eyes as she attempted to fend off Crown in ‘What You Want wid Bess?’ However, ‘happy dust’ won in the end as she headed to New York with Frederick Ballentine’s honey-voiced and loose-limbed Sportin’ Life."
"Her man was the hapless Robbins, portrayed by Chauncey Packer, who did double duty as the lively Crabman hawking his catch later in the opera."
"Review: PORGY AND BESS Raises the Roof at the Metropolitan
It was put across, sometimes sensationally, by a supremely versatile cast...Brittany Renee (a cocaine-besotted, weak-willed Bess)"
PORGY AND BESS runs through January 24 at the The Metropolitan Opera - purchase tickets below!
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