![Alfred Walker and Nicole Cabell in <i>Porgy and Bess</i>.](/web/20161201034806im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/y/w/9/y/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsxqa1.png/1480328635457.jpg)
Porgy and Bess
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, David Robertson
Opera House, November 26
★★★★
For a work whose music is so widely loved, complete performances of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, particularly with full orchestra, are relatively scarce in Sydney.
For that reason and for the buoyancy of its cast, this semi-staged production on a thrust extension to the concert platform with props but no set is most welcome, despite limitations to full theatrical flowering.
Alfred Walker's sings Porgy with a sound of warmth, wide-grain and rich hue, embodying the humanity of universal suffering that has often been invoked in response to critics who question the work's white-male representations of race and gender.
Nicole Cabell's voice as Bess has a leaner, brighter and coloured centre, though still with ample warmth, with which she creates a torn, vulnerable and tragic persona.
As the insinuating drug pusher, Sporting Life, tenor Jermaine Smith sings and moves with the lithe agility of a fast talker in an amoral world. His It Ain't Necessarily So was mercurial and eluded continuity of line with playful riffs.
Gwendolyn Brown's formidable Maria soon put him in his place with a feisty slap-down that earned spontaneous applause. Eric Greene's Crown is a bullying, overbearing strongman with a hard-edged stentorian sound like cold steel.
The production, indeed the opera's most disarming moment is when Julia Bullock as Clara with babe in arms walks centre stage at the start to deliver a Summertime of hazy bright warmth. She and baritone Leon Williams (as her husband Jake) cultivated a lyrical style thriving on the freshness of Gershwin's melodic inspiration.
As the widow Serena Karen Slack sang with soaring power and her lament in the second scene highlighted flaws in amplification which distorted sound and diction.
This was toned down in the second half, but, with such big voices, was arguably unnecessary, in that it tended to accentuate the separation of voices and orchestra, inhibit intimate balance and level out contrast.
The Philharmonia Choirs, however, were alert and attuned as a chorus, partnering responsively with the singers despite being seated at the back.
Conductor David Robertson worked within a wide tempo range, energising the fast music assertively while allowing langourous ease (which would have benefited from greater sensuality of sound from the amplification) in slower passages.
Upstaging everyone was Djakapurra Beatty, as the child Scipio who shrugged, finger-tapped and observed everything with wiry insouciance.