OPERA
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2019 (resuming from JANUARY 8 through FEBRUARY 1, 2020)
7:30 PM

Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$53-$495
https://www.metopera.org/season/2019-20-season/porgy-and-bess/

I'll admit to a good deal of ambivalence about Porgy and Bess. For one thing, much as I worship George Gershwin as a songwriter, when he moves out of pop forms — either in his orchestral music or in this stab at opera (OK, his solo piano pieces are marvelous) — his work becomes soggy. And then there's the issue of cultural appropriation haunting this opera like a specter. That said, who'd want to miss this Metropolitan Opera production of a major American work (no matter what reservations you might have about it) by a major American composer with a dream cast and an excellent conductor? That further said, having declined to miss it, I myself kind of hated this stale, boring, brain-dead, cowardly production. OTOH, Sunday's matinée is the first Sunday opera performance at the Met, like, ever (if you care about that kind of thing).

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT: P.J. Clarke's is your best bet, both from the Americana standpoint and the should-still-be-open-after-evening-curtain standpoint.