On My Way: The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess by Joseph Horowitz

On My Way: The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess Reviews

• 
  robin friedman

  "Bring My Goat"!
  
  At the conclusion of George Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess", Porgy learns that his beloved Bess has gone to New York City with Sporting Life. Porgy rises heroically to the occasion. "Bring my goat"!, he cries, and begins the long 1000 mile trek to New York as he leads the chorus in singing "I'm on my way". Joseph Horowitz discusses the origins of this grand moment in American theater and of much else in Gershwin's opera in his new book, "On My Way: the Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess". (2013) Horowitz is a music critic and artistic advisor who has written ten previous books on American music.
  
  In addition to telling the story of the creation of "Porgy and Bess", Horowitz discusses what he calls "cultural fluidity" in American art. Horowitz argues that American art music was long dominated by European models and not by an indigenous musical tradition. When the composer Antonin Dvorak visited the United States in the late 19th Century, he predicted that an indigenous American music would develop from the music of African-Americans. While the American musical establishment continued in awe of Europe and developed a "performance" culture based on European masterworks, the composers Charles Ives and George Gershwin set out to develop a uniquely American art form separate from European models. In Gershwin's case, this art from involved "cultural fluidity" be its attempt to appeal to a broad audience and to find commonality between classical and popular art.
  
  The theme of "cultural fluidity" pervades Horowitz' study as he offers a biographical portrait of Rouben Mamoulian (1897 -- 1987). In 1927, Mamoulian directed the Broadway production of "Porgy" by Dubose and Dorothy Heyward, based on the earlier novel of the same name. In 1935, Mamoulian directed the first production of "Porgy and Bess" written to a libretto by Dubose Heyward. Horowitz examines the novel, the play, and the opera to show the large extent of Mamoulian's contributions. He makes use of a Library of Congress collection of Mamoulian's papers that was only opened to the public in 2009.
  
  Horowitz shows that Mamoulian played a critical role. The novel began as a nostalgic, allegedly realistic story of poor African Americans in a decrepit housing unit, Catfish Row, in Charleston, South Carolina. In the play and even more so in the opera, Mamoulian changed the local character of Heyward's story to a fable of love and redemption with universal meaning. The line "Bring my Goat!" does not appear in Heyward but was added to the play and opera by Mamoulian, together with Porgy's determination to find Bess in New York. Mamoulian made many other additions, including a "Symphony of Noise" characterizing the sounds of the African-American community of Charleston at the beginning of Act 3 of the play and the opera.
  
  The book offers a biography of Mamoulian and his early training in Russia and Paris. He immigrated to the United States to direct opera and theater in Rochester, New York, before landing a job on Broadway to direct "Porgy". Horowitz finds that Mamoulian created a highly centralized, "stylized" approach to directing, in which he was in control of every detail of the work. Mamoulian relied on large gestures, music, and rhythm to project a work, more than he did on individual dialogue. Horowitz offers a detailed discussion of Mamoulian's contributions to "Porgy" and to "Porgy and Bess". Horowitz also discusses in detail what he considers Mamoulian's third masterwork: the 1932 musical "Love me Tonight" starring Maurice Chevalier with music by Rogers and Hart. Mamoulian subsequently directed the Broadway productions of "Oklahoma" and "Carousel", but Horowitz pays less attention to them. He describes the catastrophes that plagued Mamoulian's late career. Samuel Goldwyn fired Mamoulian from directing the movie version of "Porgy and Bess" and he resigned amidst controversy as the director of "Cleopatra", effectively ending his career.
  
  Horowitz sees much in common between Mamoulian and Gershwin. The director was an immigrant while the composer was the son of immigrants. Both used their immigrant status to develop a vision of American culture and "cultural fluidity" that eluded many native born artists and critics. Horowitz traces the rehabilitation of Gershwin's reputation in works such as "Rhapsody in Blue" and the "Piano Concerto in F" in addition to "Porgy and Bess". During his lifetime, many "highbrow" critics patronized Gershwin and his opera. Horowitz argues eloquently that "Porgy and Bess" is the United States' undisputed masterwork in the form of an American native theater.
  
  The book is engagingly written although it is repetitive in places and departs from chronological sequence. The book is written for a broad audience with its reflections on the nature of American music. The content of the book, however, will most interest readers with a strong interest in American theater and a familiarity and love for Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess". The discussions of Mamoulian and his approach to directing opera, theater, and film is valuable and insightful but may prove daunting to casual readers. The appendixes to the book include the texts of the ending of the novel "Porgy" the play, and the opera "Porgy and Bess" to make clear the differences and Mamoulian's role, together with Mamoulian's stage directions for the "symphony of noises" and a synopsis of the story of "Porgy and Bess".
  
  Robin Friedman
• 
  Russell Sanders

  “On My Way”: the Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess” is a curious book. Written by Joseph Horowitz, a music critic, it leans heavily on the story of the original director of Porgy and Bess, using copious research. Horowitz even admits at the beginning of the book that he first saw the opera in 1965—thirty years after it premiered—and didn’t fully appreciate it until he saw it again in 2005. So, obviously, everything he says, his vivid descriptions of Mamoulian’s stagings of both the source play Porgy and the opera Porgy and Bess are from research. This is not to say that other authors haven’t faced this dilemma before, that is, describing something they never saw. But trying to recreate a performance that happened almost a century ago and is not available on film is a tremendous task. I, personally, am a theater person first, a musician second, so I would have liked Horowitz to have dwelt more on Mamoulian’s history as a director and his techniques. He does just that, but we also get a lot of critique of the music, as well. I suppose the subtitle warns us of this. Horowitz is centering his book, according to the subtitle, on the combination of Mamoulian, Gershwin, and Porgy and Bess. But—and I realize one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover—the dust jacket features a giant head of Rouben Mamoulian, giving the impression that the book will be more about him than either Gershwin or Porgy and Bess. It is about Mamoulian primarily, but I would have liked to have heard more about Mamoulian’s stagings of Oklahoma!, Carousel, and other history-making musicals. Still, it is fascinating to see the tale of a man who was a creative genius and who let that genius destroy him, for his career ended much too soon simply because he became difficult to work with and oppositional to powerful producers, particularly Samuel Goldwyn. The chapter about the movie version of Porgy and Bess is enlightening indeed. I guess I have mixed feelings about this book. Perhaps I wanted a breezy theatrical biography. What I got was an almost academic critique of an American opera, its creators, and the stormy director who led the production.
• 
  Vinton Rafe

  Thorough, yet curiously uninvolving.