The little fishing village of Catfish Row in Charleston, SC where “Porgy and Bess” the most beautiful and sophisticated opera takes place, is the setting for one of the most precious and unique human phenomena I know. It appears right before the ecstatic end of Act 1, Scene 2, and the Gershwin brothers, George and Ira, were geniuses in connecting this phenomenon in an overwhelming mixture of text and music, which elevate this scene to extreme spiritual heights. After a nerve-racking card game, Crown, Bess’s boyfriend and alas, her pimp, who dominates her by violence, stabs a fisherman named Robbins to death with a cotton hook and flees. As police whistles are heard, all flee to their homes and lock their doors, gripped by fear. Best is left alone. She is stoned by “happy dust” (cocaine), musically illustrated buy narcotic- like melodic loops. Pleading For shelter, each door is shut in her face. On the verge of her despair, Porgy, the disabled, goodhearted beggar, opens his door to her and she finds refuge.
The second scene opens in the room of Robins’s widow, Sarina, where Robbins’s body lies on the bed with a saucer on his chest to collect donations for burial. People gather around, singing, to mourn Robbins and to comfort the widow. Porgy and Bess, together now, enter and put money into a saucer, as others exhort one another to do the same. Sarina bewails her bitter fate Singing defog breaking aria, “My Man’s Gone Now.” When the funeral director comes to take the body, he sees that there’s not enough money gathered in the saucer and refuses to bury it. He intends to give the body to the medical institution, but he agrees to the burial after Sarina begs him: “I’m gonna to work on Monday, and I swear to God I’m gonna pay you every cent.” The funeral director leaves. Right then, out of the blue, as if touched by a spell, Bess, who has been totally silent, bursts into song, which draws everyone like magic and escalates to such heights as if the gates of heaven were open to receive it: “Oh, the train is at the station, and you better get on board, cause it’s leaving today, and it’s heading to the promise land…”
What is happening here? Best, the prostitute, the drug addict, who is known as a heretic, is leading everyone in an electrifying spiritual, inviting sinners to board the train to salvation and redemption? I believe we are witnessing the most fascinating kind of repentance. It is a sudden and total metamorphosis that happens, not due to a rational decision or a calculable choice, but because Bess is experiencing, for the first time, goodness, human warmth, and compassion, Attributes of which best was deprived due to certain life circumstances. Porgy’s gentleness, people giving comfort to, and solidarity with, the widow, the funeral director’s generosity, have all combined to generate in Bess such positive energy that, while is she singing, you can actually hear from the orchestra the chug, chug, chug, choo-choo of the train.
