Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas - Maya Angelou [50]
By intermission I had been totally consumed. I had laughed and cried, exulted and mourned, and expected the second act to produce no new emotions. I returned to my seat prepared for a repetition of great music.
The curtain rose on a picnic in progress. The revelers were church members led by a pious old woman who forbade dancing, drinking and even laughing. Cab Calloway as Sportin' Life pranced out in a cream-colored suit and tried to paganize the Christians.
He sang “It Ain't Necessarily So,” strutting as if he was speaking ex cathedra.
The audience applauded loudly, interrupting the stage action. Then a young woman broke away from a group of singers near the wings. She raced to the center of the stage and began to dance.
The sopranos sang a contrapuntal high-toned encouragement and the baritones urged the young woman on. The old lady tried to catch her, to stop the idolatrous dance, but the dancer moved out of her reach, flinging her legs high, carrying the music in her body as if it were a private thing, given into her care and protection. I nearly screamed with delight and envy. I wanted to be with her on the stage letting the music fly through my body. Her torso seemed to lose solidity and float, defying gravity. I wanted to be with her. No, I wanted to be her.
In the second act, Warfield, as the crippled Porgy dragged the audience into his despair. Even kneeling, he was a large man, broad and thick-chested. His physical size made his affliction and his loss of Bess even sadder. The resonant voice straddled the music and rode it, controlling it.
I remained in my seat after the curtain fell and allowed people to climb over my knees to reach the aisle. I was stunned. Porgy and Bess had shown me the greatest array of Negro talent I had ever seen.
I took Clyde to the first matinée and he liked the dancing and “the little goat that pulled Porgy off the stage” at the end of the opera.
The Purple Onion had picked up my three-month option and I decided to develop my own material. I began making up music for poems I had written years before and writing new songs that fit the calypso form.
One night the club was filled and more people were waiting outside for the room to clear. I lifted my head from a bow and standing before me was a beautiful Black woman holding a long-stemmed rose. I bowed to her and she returned the bow, continuing to bend until she laid the flower at my feet. She blew a kiss and walked down the aisle to her table. Her friends began applauding again. I was not sure whether it was for me or for her, so I nodded to the musicians and started another encore. Halfway through I recognized the woman. She was the soprano who sang the “Strawberry Song” in Porgy and Bess. I almost bit my song in two; all the people at that table were probably from Porgy and Bess.
I went directly from the stage to the table and took the rose along.
The group stood and applauded again. I laid the flower on the table and applauded them. The audience, infected, began to applaud us.
“These are the great singers from Porgy and Bess,” I shouted over the noise. People stood up to look, and soon the whole audience was standing and we were applauding ourselves for our good taste to be alive and in the right place at the right time.
We went to Pete's Pool Room, a large rambling restaurant on Broadway where the beats and artists and big-eyed tourists and burlesque queens went for a breakfast of hard rolls and maybe a game of pool. I wanted to call the whole room to order and present to them the singers from Porgy and Bess. We found seats and I heard the names again.
Ned Wright, a tall muscular man of about thirty, said I was excellent and “Don't run yourself down, darling, there are plenty of people in the world who will do that for you.”
Lillian Hayman, the dramatic soprano, who was as plump as a pillow and biscuit-brown,