July 10--George Gershwin's masterpiece, "Porgy and Bess," is a work seemingly tailor-made for warm, lazy, hazy summer nights at Ravinia.
Unfortunately, Wednesday was not one of those nights. A cold, pattering rain dampened walk-in business at the park and severely cut into lawn attendance for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's concert performance of highlights from the folk opera under the direction of the inimitable Bobby McFerrin.
Far from being yet another casualty of Chicago's weird summer weather, however, the McFerrin mashup of "Porgy's" greatest hits turned out to be a triumph, a joyous opener of the CSO's 2015 residency at the three-month-long festival in Highland Park.
The multitalented McFerrin, a wonderful jazz vocalist whose skills as a symphonic conductor have earned him honors in the classical realm as well, is a master of the Gershwin style. He proved as much with his concert version of "Porgy" that he first brought to Ravinia in 1997.
If the second time around was the charm, this had as much to do with the fully committed contributions of the splendid solo singers and chorus as it did with the energetic, idiomatic performance he drew from the CSO.
Any such distillation of this slice-of-life opera about Gullah blacks living in fictitious Catfish Row, S.C., is forced to jettison the dramatic action that connects the many great songs by Gershwin and his brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin. But most audience members already know the plot and have no trouble filling in the stage business in their mind's eye while basking in those irresistible tunes.
Trading a baton for flowing hand gestures, McFerrin caught the jazz undercurrent of the score, his easy pacing and flexibility of rhythm being a welcome corrective to the stiffness that can mar the Gershwin performances of some classically trained musicians. His penetrating gaze missed nothing and no one, belying his laid-back manner on the podium.
Some doubling up of roles was required, with Broadway vocalist Brian Stokes Mitchell taking the parts of Porgy, Jake and Sportin' Life, and soprano Nicole Cabell doing effective vocal honors as Bess and Clara (for "Summertime"). The fine baritone Stephen Salters took on the somewhat abbreviated duties of Crown and the Crab Man. The fresh-voiced soprano Lauren Michelle brought an affecting intensity to Serena's lament, "My Man's Gone Now." Contralto Gwendolyn Brown sang sumptuously as the Strawberry Woman.
Cabell, swaddled in acres of pleated crimson (with matching shawl to help ward off the cold), looked glamorous and sang gorgeously. Her rendition of the opera's greatest hit, "Summertime," was the tenderest of lullabies, creamy of sound and caring of word meanings.
She and Mitchell are both exceptionally attractive performers, and the closeups her Bess and his Porgy shared via the giant screens at the corners of the pavilion lent winning intimacy and dramatic verisimilitude to their "Bess, You Is My Woman Now." Together, with the video cameras zeroing in on them, they made this great love duet a powerful and intimate declaration of love.
Mitchell wound up with the lion's share of singing, and, accomplished Broadway singing actor that he is, he stole the show with his powerful voice and charismatic stage presence.
His "A Woman Is a Sometime Thing" set the musical bar high early in the evening, and Mitchell kept topping himself with each ensuing number. He made a meal of both of Sportin' Life's songs. Nothing could top his bravura one-two vocal punch near the end: He followed his rousing tenoral rendition of "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York" by plunging deep into the bass-baritone register for Porgy's "Oh, Bess, Oh Where's My Bess." Wow!
Wonderful, too, was the Josephine Lee-trained chorus, Vocality, made up of current and former members of her Chicago Children's Choir and singers from Elmhurst College and Constellation Men's Ensemble. They threw themselves into everything they sang with palpable gusto.
A nifty plus was an African drum ensemble drawn from the Ko-Thi Dance Company. The six young drummers underscored the chorus' Kittiwah Island frolic ("I Ain't Got No Shame") and returned to the stage following the curtain calls to send everyone home happy with an encore burst of drumming.
Ted Sperling will lead the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in music from Disney's "Fantasia" and "Fantasia 2000," with selections from the films shown on video screens in the pavilion and on the lawn; 7 p.m. Sunday. Sperling also will direct the orchestra and the Lakeside Singers in Danny Elfman's music for Tim Burton films; 8 p.m. Tuesday. Ravinia, Green Bay and Lake Cook roads, Highland Park; $25-$50, $25 lawn; 847-266-5100, ravinia.org.
John von Rhein is a Tribune critic.
jvonrhein@tribpub.com
