George Gershwin, Blue Monday (1922)

Did you know that Porgy and Bess was Gershwin's second opera?  I didn't.  But you probably did, on account of how smart you are.  And sexy.  And...say, are you doing anything later?  Wanna grab a couple of drinks?

Well, this is only a short, twenty-ish-minute piece.  It takes place in some sort of café or bar.  Joe is, I don't know, just some guy.  His sweetheart is named Vi.  There's also some other dude, Tom, trying to seduce Vi.  He tells her that Joe is seeing another woman to try to pry her away, and tells her he's expecting a telegram from another woman..  It's not true, but he hasn't seen his mother in a long time and is expecting a telegram.  You see where this is going, probably.  When the telegram comes he refuses to tell her who it's from (why?), so in a spasm of jealousy, she shoots him dead.  That's all.

At a greater length, this plot could work: if there were more time to develop the characters and make it believable.  As it is, I quite literally el oh ell'd when Joe gets shot and collapses theatrically.  It's just so comically precipitous.  Really, if she's on that much of a hair-trigger, then if it wasn't this it would've been something else soon enough.  Sheesh, people.

I mean, the music's okay, attempting--as in his more famous opera--to fuse jazz and romantic music.  (although this one was originally performed in blackface, so...not great).  It's not overly memorable, though, with no real stand-out numbers.  Wikipedia quotes a review that's a bit meaner than I would be, but is funny enough to quote: "the most dismal, stupid, and incredible blackface sketch that has probably ever been perpetrated. In it a dusky soprano finally killed her gambling man. She should have shot all her associates the moment they appeared and then turned the pistol on herself."

I think I might have a sort-of explanation for why it is the way it is: it actually has a subtitle, "Opera à la Afro-American," which is a bit cringy (especially given the blackface), but you can see it, maybe, as Gershwin saying, okay, we all know about operas with white characters, but what about one with black characters?  It might look a li'l something like this.  So then rather than presenting a full-length thing, you can--in theory--sort of get the idea of what such a thing might look like from this abbreviated sketch.  Well, maybe.  Either way, it's not of especial interest outside the historical kind.