SUMMARY: On this day nearly six decades ago, “West Side Story” premiered on Broadway. And the music of the Sharks and the Jets, and star-crossed lovers Tony and Maria is as vibrant as it was in 1957. Jeffrey Brown sits down with composer and musician Rob Kapilow to discuss what it is about Leonard Bernstein's hit musical style that has allowed the love story to live on for decades.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Finally tonight, on a light note: On this day in 1957, “West Side Story” debuted on Broadway.
Composer and musician Rob Kapilow is back to tell us why the music has withstood the test of time.
Jeffrey Brown sat down with Kapilow recently.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Ron Kapilow, welcome back.
ROB KAPILOW, Composer: It's great to be here.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, “West Side Story,” one of the most famous musicals in history, but not quite what it was intended to be, I guess.
ROB KAPILOW: I think that's true.
You know, Leonard Bernstein had already written two his musicals, “On the Town” and “Wonderful Town,” and those shows are filled with Bernstein's love, facility, and affection for the popular music of the day. But they're lighthearted musicals, fundamentally.
And now he wanted to do something serious, and he got together an incredibly serious crew of guys. I mean, we had Jerome Robbins, who did serious ballets. We had Arthur Laurents, who wrote serious plays. We had Leonard Bernstein, and they wanted to do something serious.
That was the amazing thing about Bernstein. He could actually do both, and he crossed over. And this whole piece is really about, in a way, the conflict between those two worlds, between the serious world.
This is going to be, he called a tragic musical comedy, if that's not an oxymoron.
JEFFREY BROWN:Tragedies get turned into operas all the time.
ROB KAPILOW: All the time.
In fact, tragedy is the lifeblood of opera. It's not really an opera unless somebody dies at the end. But people don't usually die at the end in a Broadway musical.
And this one had a body count of three, with two of them dead at the first act curtain. I mean, that is not the stuff of a Broadway musical, not to mention a classic Shakespeare play, “Romeo and Juliet,” as the background.
SUMMARY: Since its first performance in 1935, “Porgy and Bess” has earned acclaim as one of American history's best pieces of musical theater. But over time, many have come to view the opera's black characters as stereotypes. Now, a new production in Charleston aims to rectify the issue by emphasizing the characters' -- and the city's -- African roots. Jeffrey Brown reports.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):“Summertime,” from the 1934 American opera classic “Porgy and Bess.” It's a story set in Charleston and now being performed here as the centerpiece of the 40th anniversary celebration of the Spoleto Festival USA.
The music was familiar, but as the opera progressed, it had a less familiar look, just as visual director Jonathan Green wanted.
JONATHAN GREEN, Artist: You have to know what the stereotypes are to move away from the stereotypes.
JEFFREY BROWN: And what did you see in the stereotypes?
JONATHAN GREEN: I saw in the stereotypes a complete disrespect of a continent of Africa, not being a part of the culture of a people.
JEFFREY BROWN: Green, one of Charleston's most prominent artists, is himself from the Gullah community, descendants of West African slaves who lived in this area, the very setting of “Porgy and Bess,” for which he's imagined a kind of alternative history.
JONATHAN GREEN: What if West Africans came as immigrants? What would we be looking at? What would we see? And what are we missing because we haven't supported that?
JEFFREY BROWN:The bright colors, patterns, and vivid designs, Green believes, fill in a missing piece and offer a greater truth about both the opera and the city.
Set in the 1920s, “Porgy and Bess” is the story of the disabled beggar Porgy, sung by Lester Lynch, the beautiful prostitute Bess, Alyson Cambridge, and their life in Catfish Row, a Charleston tenement. It's based on the 1925 novel “Porgy” by DuBose Heyward, who lived near the real-life tenement, then called Cabbage Row.
HARLAN GREENE, Historian: This very picturesque place was once a slum.
JEFFREY BROWN: Local historian Harlan Greene has studied the period and the people. He even found this photo of the real-life man, Samuel Smalls, on whom Porgy is based.
I asked him about the success of Heyward's original novel.
HARLAN GREENE:What he did that was truly earth-shattering is that he showed a love story between a black man and a black woman, and this — a passionate love affair. And it wasn't Uncle Remus. It wasn't Aunt Jemima. He took real people, and it wasn't a race novel. It wasn't a stereotype.
He shattered all sorts of conventions at the time.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
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