It’s Summertime, and the Staging Ain’t Easy . . . : Opera: Hope Clarke is unhappy that her work on ‘Porgy and Bess’ is being modified before its area visit. But the Houston Opera’s general director counters that ‘it’s not a new staging.’

When the Houston Grand Opera’s new touring production of “Porgy and Bess” arrived in San Diego in early March, everyone assumed that it was the same staging that would play the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion June 7-18 and the Orange County Performing Arts Center June 21-25.

It ain’t necessarily so.

With a new director currently making a number of changes in the original Hope Clarke production, that Houston “Porgy” will definitely look different in its return to the Southland next week.

How different? It depends on whom you ask.

According to David Gockley, general director of the Houston Grand Opera, “The basic framework of the production is unchanged. By far, the conceptual basis and the whole physical manifestation of the production emanates from Ms. Clarke.”

Gockley says Clarke’s production, which is the first professional staging of the opera by an African American, is being “added to slightly or refined or tweaked” by the new director, Tazewell Thompson, also an African American.

“It’s not a new staging,” says Gockley. “I would say the most substantial change is the opening sequence that gets us from the overture to the Jasbo Brown piano solo to Catfish Row and [the song] ‘Summertime.’ ”

Because that sequence involves new lighting and other technical changes, it will be finalized during the setup and dress rehearsal in Los Angeles, Gockley says. But Thompson is also redirecting the cast this week between performances in San Francisco.

Although Hope Clarke hasn’t seen the results for herself, the reports from cast members, she says, have left her feeling “destroyed.”

“As far as I have heard, he has touched the concept,” Clarke says. “These are major changes, and I’m very emotional about it. It’s almost as if I’m being erased. That’s how I feel.” A former Broadway and Alvin Ailey dancer, Clarke had previously directed a production of “Porgy and Bess” in Finland as well as Mozart’s “Cosi fan Tutte” and Menotti’s “The Medium.”

Clarke and Gockley agree that she was asked to make revisions in the Houston staging in Seattle in mid-March--after the San Diego run and four stops into the opera’s 11-city U.S. tour--and that their working relationship remained cordial and professional. They both report that he wasn’t happy with the results. In his words: “I knew in my heart that something had to be done to get the production off a particular plateau.”

“I don’t want to take anything away from what Hope did,” Gockley explains. “I think she did an excellent job. However, in my experience over a couple of decades with this opera [in other stagings], it was not achieving an emotional payoff. My desire was to finish what had been essentially a very, very good job--to bring this production to the level where I thought the piece itself was being shown in the best light.”

Clarke remembers that “David and I didn’t agree on everything [in Seattle] and that some of the things he had fixed I went back and changed--’cause I thought I was the director; I thought I had a say. Obviously, he was not satisfied, but the changes that are being made in the opera now have nothing to do with the changes he spoke to me about.”

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To counter Gockley’s sense of disappointment, she emphasizes the generally favorable critical response to her staging. “I was unbelievably pleased that the reviewers understood what I was doing,” she says. “They saw the things that I wanted them to see, and I was extraordinarily happy with the reviews.”

By the time the production reached Miami early last month, Gockley was trying to solve the problems he believed remained without Clarke’s assistance. Enter Tazewell Thompson, artistic director of the Syracuse Stage and director-dramaturg for an operatic adaptation of “St. Louis Woman” planned for the Houston Grand Opera in 1977. He was invited by Gockley to see “Porgy and Bess” and share his reactions. He began working with the company just before the next stop on the tour: San Francisco.

Thompson defines his position as “a role of awkwardness. This is the first time I’ve been asked to do something like this.”

He says he was asked to make all the denizens of Catfish Row--not just the opera’s main characters “more of an integral part of the story; to bring them in earlier and to have them in and out of the piece, not just in the choral moments.”

“Perhaps I’m breathing some more life into it, I hope so, and making it a little more vivid,” he says. “And, yes, there have been some restagings of quite a few scenes. I would hope that if I’m brought in to do something that my contribution is significant. Otherwise, there’s no point in having me there.”

Thompson also says he’s restored a scene that had been cut and brought “a different vitality and energy and interrelationships with one another” to the group scenes of the opera. “And there are some other things that I hope to get to in the next several days.”

And what about the new production credits, which reportedly will continue to list Hope Clarke as director-choreographer and put Thompson’s name under the line “additional staging by . . .”? Isn’t he completely redirecting this “Porgy and Bess”?

It ain’t necessarily so.

“If the management sees me as the director, then I’m the director,” Thompson says. “Obviously they don’t because they still have Hope Clarke’s name on it.”