| Photography | Ken Howard |
| The cast of “Porgy and Bess” at the 2019 Metropolitan Opera. Charlotte Her Opera will stage a version of the stage classic later this month. |
“Black people have always had our backs up. We can withstand anything that can be thrown at us.
Kenneth Overton describes the timeliness of his opera Porgy and Bess, which depicts African-American life in 1930s Charleston.
Opera Carolina runs at the Bergtheater in Charlotte on January 22, 24, 26 and 28.
One of five guest artists in the 14-man cast, Overton plays the main character, Porgy. A native of Philadelphia, he majored in vocal performance at the North Carolina School of the Arts in the 1990s and attended his program as an opera artist. Now he lives in New York, but he regularly returns to Charlotte.
Charlottean Sequina DuBose plays Clara and sings perhaps her most famous song, “Summertime.” UNC Charlotte’s Assistant Professor of Voice grew up in Detroit with her mother and her grandmother who constantly sang songs around the house. She likes many music genres, including Motown, and she named her dog after Diana Ross.
DuBose, PhD in Vocal Pedagogy, studies hybrid vocal literature, music that uses two or more genres. “Porgy and Bess” is an early example.
“[The composer]George Gershwin called it a folk opera,” Dubose said. “It was important to him to incorporate his love of jazz and other musical styles into this art form. That’s when we start to see American identity take shape.”
James Mina, artistic director of Opera Carolina, agrees.
“It’s a quintessential American production,” he said. “The amazing thing was that Gershwin stipulated that whenever Porgy and Bess was performed, the whole company had to be African-American. It was written very clearly about what was going to happen.”
Black audiences should appreciate “Porgy and Bess” as a period drama, Mina said. It helps people reflect on past attitudes and think about what attitudes should be, he adds.
“Black audiences want artists who look like them,” Mina said. “I think that’s why this show resonates so well.”
The production of Opera Carolina also features black director Dennis Robinson Jr., Director of Programs and Partnerships for Seattle Opera. Robinson has directed ‘Porgy and Bess’ before, and several of his cast members know him.
“Telling our story through our own eyes to people who look like us is a whole different experience,” Overton said. .”
DuBose backs him up.
“It’s a different experience when someone gets a story that might have had a point of reference in terms of the character’s experience,” she said. Porgy and Bess is a universal tale of star-crossed lovers, featuring beautiful music that has stood the test of time, says DuBose. “It’s hard these days to find new music that you can hum away from the theater,” she adds. “It’s classic in that sense.”
