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Missed part one of the conversation? Click here.

All operas contain some resonance for a contemporary audience, or no one would bother to perform them—or, in fact, to have written them in the first place. The classic operatic themes—love, loss, power struggles, comic human weakness—are rendered larger than life, true, but nevertheless touch us all. But few operas contribute as much to today’s cultural conversation as George Gershwin’s 1934 Porgy & Bess, running at Seattle Opera through Aug. 25. The opera’s story centers on hot-button issues of race and gender, and abuse of both people and substances; the opera itself, a tale of blacks told by whites (Gershwin and librettist DuBose Heyward), raises questions of cultural appropriation.

Dominica Myers, Seattle Opera’s Associate Director of Administration, has since joining the company in 2016 been responsible for staff training in racial equity and for organizing public forums focusing on racial representation in opera. “Part of our challenge,” she says of Seattle Opera’s new attention to social issues, “is to start learning how to have really great dialogue with the community about these operas in their social context, and how we’re able to face those issues head-on in a mindful way—in a way that really engages the audience members to want to talk about and go more deeply in those conversations.” But this attention isn’t just a perk for ticket-buyers, it’s necessary: “I think we have pressure from outside to do the right thing. Audiences aren’t going to show up if we aren’t putting material in front of them that resonates.” We asked her to share her thoughts about the opera.

Your first impression?

It’s just so full… I think [the production] lives up to what a 2,900-seat house should command. It’s big, the voices are big, there’s a lot of people and movement and moving parts—and at the same time there’s a great amount of specificity in the choices that not only the main cast who have named roles have made, but then also each of the chorus members; they all know who they are. I come from a theater background—opera really is about the voice, but when I watch it, I bring a theater eye to it, and I’m just so impressed with not only the amazing voices. The execution of it is really astounding.

There seems to be such a strong connection between the actors and the roles they play—they really seem to draw on their inner resources and their own histories in ways that come across. They’re so personalized and internalized.

I think a lot of these singers have done Porgy & Bess before, and so they’ve had more of an opportunity to sit with the characters. They’re made choices, which is really what you want.

This opera has been controversial for its representation of African Americans—for the negative traits that some of the characters exhibit. Any thoughts about the work itself, or how this production may have tried to speak to some of these criticisms?

I think it’s easy to sort of look back through our country’s history and the history of stereotyping and blackface and minstrelsy, and you can certainly find elements of that. But I also think the choices the singers have made in this production, because they’re so specific about who these people are, I can actually see many different kinds of people on the stage. Even a character like Sportin’ Life . . . I don’t know if you’re familiar with Haitian voodoo, but they have this loa [a voodoo god] called Baron Samedi. He’s kind of a character when you see Haitian drama or dramas about Haiti, he seems to come up. He slinks about the stage, he’s a trickster, he’s a prankster—but his job as a loa, as a spirit, is really to lead you to your death. Being familiar with that character, then watching Jermaine [Smith, who sings the role]—during this point when he’s got Bess back on drugs, he’s gonna take her to New York, and it was almost like he wasn’t a real person, like he had woven this magic as this spirit character. It was really interesting to watch.

To see it as a sort of allegory—this voyage to the underworld.

So sure, you could look at that character as a stereotype—the drug dealer, the no-gooder, the flashy guy that really just wants to have a good time, who just wants to pull one over on people so they can get more money—that exists in real life. And it certainly wouldn’t be just black folks where you would find that kind of character. You would find that person in all sorts of cultures.

At the same time, I certainly wouldn’t want to be dismissive of how stereotypes have been used to demonize black folks in different ways: Sportin’ Life; the “black brute,” the character of Crown; or Bess, the portrayal of her as hypersexualized, or has too many men, has drug problems. But I actually really like the way both Angel [Blue] and Elizabeth [Llewellyn, who sing Bess in alternate casts] are taking Bess and humanizing her, creating a sympathetic character—someone we can relate to, someone who is battling her demons. Unfortunately, at the point we leave off, she’s lost; that doesn’t mean that she’s lost forever. Knowing people who have battled addiction, some didn’t make out alive, but others have made it through and are coping every day with trying to maintain their sobriety. There really is a lot in this piece that leads to social issues of today.

So if you’re going to talk someone into seeing this—perhaps someone new to opera—what would you say?

For some folks I would use the “quintessential American opera” line. The music is gorgeous. Through and through it’s really well done. We know many of the songs from different places, they’ve become really popularized, but to hear the songs in the context they were meant to be sung, it’s really enlightening. Out of all these characters that we have in the show, I really feel like there’s someone for just about anyone to relate to.

What a lot of critics of Porgy & Bess either don’t or won’t recognize is that you also have the strongly moral characters, who are very devout—kind of the anchors of this community. In these dozen people we get to know, there’s really an extremely wide variety of human nature.

Others might find Jake and Clara relatable; it’s sad when they die, because you know they have such high hopes for their baby. Some might relate to the baby. Also I like that it’s not cut-and-dried that people are good or people are bad. There’s folk engaging in different things; maybe it’s harmless, or maybe they shouldn’t be gambling. [Matriarch] Maria, she’s selling liquor, but in many ways she’s holding the community together… We want to see characters who are a little more believable, but you don’t want to lose the voice—you want those voices to be big… I think that’s what I find remarkable about this group of singers—they are able to fill that house with their voices, with their sound, yet have the subtlety of the character. You don’t see that every day.