For those who do not already know it (which will be nearly everyone, although there is a previous recording—9/77) this will be an astonishing discovery. Gershwin's first opera was written as part of George White's 1922 Scandals and although one or two critics recognized its importance, it was generally derided and the impresario had it removed from the bill. The libretto by B. G. DeSylva is little more than a bar-room parody of the worst operatic cliches—which include an aria ''Vi, I'm expecting a telegram''. The 23-year-old Gershwin's music, however, exhibits all the qualities that later grew into his mastery of total American music and which, to a large extent, laid down the rules and the technique for future generations of American opera composers.
The Overture leaps forward with all the vigour of later Gershwin essays in similar jazz-oriented style and the main song, ''Blue Monday Blues'', is as strong a parody of the blues style as anyone had created up to that time. One needs to try and imagine the impact of this piece on an audience in 1922—when even ragtime had yet to be heard as anything but an aberration. Five years before Showboat and 13 before Porgy, Blue Monday seems to be really the first true ''jazz opera''. Its brevity does not lend itself to much interpretation but all the soloists throw themselves into their roles with feeling—happily there is no sense of condescending parody. It makes one realize how little we still know of Gershwin's total theatrical oeuvre—when will we ever hear Treasure Girl, Show Girl, Song of the Flame or Pardon My English?
Marin Alsop conducts her own Concordia orchestra, which she founded in 1984, in Oscar Levant's Caprice for orchestra, an agreeable interlude originally conceived for a radio show in 1940, and which Joseph Smith's informative notes tell us was once featured by Beecham. Leslie Stifelman plays the Gershwin Concerto with clarity and strength—I have heard more subtle performances of it, but it is the perfect companion piece to the opera, showing the progress the composer was making in his quest for the American sound.'