A star-studded personal ‘Bess’ at the Bowl

Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” has more hit tunes than probably any other opera, including Bizet’s “Carmen.” The decades-long struggle for it to win recognition as a legitimate opera, rather than a hybrid, superior Broadway musical, was won decisively not by the ponderous Metropolitan Opera production in the 1980s but by Trevor Nunn’s revelatory, heartbreaking version for the Glyndebourne Opera in 1993.

But the impulse to present the music away from the stage is irresistible. So the Los Angeles Philharmonic, led by Leonard Slatkin, brought three Broadway and television stars and a very hip chorus to sing a potpourri of selections Friday and Saturday at the Hollywood Bowl, ending the Philharmonic’s Gershwin celebration that began Tuesday.

In some ways, this was a throwback to the early days when staged productions were few and getting as much of the music out there as possible was desirable.

Famed orchestrator and Gershwin friend Robert Russell Bennett made the arrangement, crafting a lovely introduction out of the haunting street vendors’ cries in the second act, dropping the chorus in Porgy’s “Oh, I got plenty o’ nuttin’ ” and otherwise making nips and tucks in the score.

If the singers Friday tended to put more of their personalities into the songs, rather than embody the characters in the opera, there’s a fine popular tradition for that too. Brian Stokes Mitchell, for instance, sang Jake’s “A woman is a sometime thing” and several of Porgy’s songs with a laid-back sophistication nobody would expect to find on Catfish Row. But his breath control in “Bess, you is my woman now” was admirable.

The arresting vocalist Audra McDonald, on the other hand, both revealed Bess’ deep vulnerability in that great duet with Porgy and soared in Clara’s “Summertime, an’ the living is easy.” It was a bit of a shock, however, when she joined the ensemble for the final, “Oh Lawd, I’m on my way,” in which Porgy sets out to find Bess, who has gone to New York. This was a far way from the opera.

Wayne Brady made a sunny, insouciant Sportin’ Life. The Paul Smith Singers, standing on two sets of risers at the front of the stage, became lively individuals on their own, rather than stock-still choristers.

Earlier in the program, pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet proved a luxury soloist in “Rhapsody in Blue,” shifting from dazzlingly swift and precise finger work to relaxed, sexy swagger. Clarinetist Lorin Levee put his own swagger on the famous opening glissando. Slatkin accompanied carefully, and made sure that the big blues tune blossomed beautifully.

The conductor opened the program with Rob Mathes’ “Gershwiniana,” a pleasant but not very memorable 15-minute orchestral arrangement of Gershwin songs, and followed it with the composer’s early, suave “Lullaby,” which was a bit lost in the great outdoors.