Porgy and Bess
 |
The cast of Porgy and Bess during the Boston try-out prior to the Broadway opening. |
Porgy and Bess is an
opera with music by
George Gershwin,
libretto by
DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by
Ira Gershwin and Heyward. It was based on Heyward's novel
Porgy and the play of the same name that he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy. All three works deal with
African American life in the fictitious
Catfish Row in
Charleston, South Carolina in the early 1930s.
Originally conceived by Gershwin as an "American folk opera," the work was first performed in various forms in the fall of 1935, but was not widely accepted in the
United States as a legitimate opera until the late 1970s and
'80s: it is now considered part of the standard operatic repertoire.
Porgy and Bess is also regularly performed internationally, and several recordings of the complete work, including Gershwin's cuts, have been made. Despite this acclaim, the opera has been controversial; some from the outset have considered it
racist.
"
Summertime" is by far the best-known piece from the work, and countless interpretations of this and other individual numbers have also been recorded and performed. The opera is admired for Gershwin's innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American
jazz and
folk music idioms.
Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a crippled black man living in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina, and his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her pimp, and Sportin' Life, the drug dealer.
*Porgy, a cripple (
bass-baritone)
*Bess, Crown's girl (
soprano)
*Crown, a tough
stevedore (
baritone)
*Serena, Robbins' wife (soprano)
*Clara, Jake's wife (soprano)
*Maria, keeper of the cook-shop (
contralto)
*Jake, a fisherman (baritone)
*Sportin' Life, a dope peddler (
tenor)
*Mingo (tenor)
*Robbins, an inhabitant of Catfish Row (tenor)
*Peter, the honeyman (tenor)
*Frazier, a negro 'lawyer' (baritone)
*Annie, (
mezzo-soprano)
*Lily, Peter's wife (mezzo-soprano)
*Strawberry woman (mezzo-soprano)
*Jim, a cotton picker (baritone)
*Undertaker (baritone)
*Nelson (tenor)
*Crab man (tenor)
*Scipio, a small boy (
boy soprano)
*Mr. Archdale, a white lawyer (spoken)
*Detective (spoken)
*Policeman (spoken)
*Coroner (spoken)With the exception of the small speaking roles, all of the characters are black.
Setting: Catfish Row, a fictitious suburb of Charleston, South Carolina in the 'recent past' (c.1930).
Act I
*
Scene 1 - Catfish Row, a summer evening.The opera begins with a short introduction which segues into an evening in Catfish Row. Jabso Brown entertains the community with his piano playing. Clara sings a lullaby to her baby ("Summertime") as the working men prepare for a game of
craps. Clara's husband, Jake, tries his own lullaby ("A Woman is a Sometime Thing") with little effect. Porgy, a cripple and a beggar, enters on his goat cart to organize the game. Crown, a lowlife, and his woman Bess enter, and the game begins. Sportin' Life, the local supplier of "happy dust" (
cocaine) and bootleg alcohol, also joins in. One by one, the players get crapped out, leaving only Robbins and Crown, who have become extremely drunk. When Robbins wins, Crown starts a fight, and eventually kills Robbins. Crown runs, telling Bess to fend for herself. The door is shut on her by most of the residents, except Porgy, who shelters her.
*
Scene 2 - Serena's Room, the following night.The mourners sing a spiritual to Robbins ("Gone, Gone, Gone"). To raise money for his burial, a saucer is placed on his chest for the mourners' donations ("Overflow"). A white detective enters, in a speaking voice telling Serena (Robbins' wife) that she must bury her husband soon, or his body will be given to medical students. He arrests Peter (a bystander), whom he will force to testify against Crown. Serena laments her loss in "My man's gone now." The undertaker enters, and agrees to bury Robbins as long as Serena promises to pay him back. Bess and the chorus finish the act with "Leavin' for the Promise' Lan'".
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"My man's gone now" sung by Cynthia Clarey in the Glyndebourne Production |
Act II
*
Scene 1 - Catfish Row, a month later, in the morning.Jake and the other fishermen prepare for work ("It take a long pull to get there"). Clara asks Jake not to go, and to come to a picnic, but he tells her that they desperately need the money. This causes Porgy to sing from his window about his outlook on life ("I got plenty o' nuttin'"). Sportin' Life waltzes around, selling cocaine, but soon incurs the wrath of Maria ("I hates yo' struttin' style"). A fraudulent lawyer, Frazier, arrives and farcically divorces Bess from Crown. Archdale, a white lawman, enters and informs Porgy that Peter will soon be released. The bad omen of a buzzard flies over Catfish Row, causing Porgy to sing "Buzzard keep on flyin' over".
As the rest of Catfish Row prepares for the picnic, Sportin' Life asks Bess to start a new life with him in New York; she refuses. Bess and Porgy are now left alone, and express their love for each other ("Bess, you is my woman now"). The chorus re-enters in high spirits as they prepare to leave for the picnic ("Oh, I can't sit down"). Bess leaves Porgy behind as they go off to the picnic. Porgy reprises "I got plenty o' nuttin'" in high spirits.
*
Scene 2 - Kittiwah Island, that evening.The chorus enjoys themselves at the picnic ("I ain't got no shame doin' what I like to do!"). Sportin' Life presents the chorus his cynical views on the Bible ("It ain't necessarily so"), causing Serena to chastise them ("Shame on all you sinners!"). Crown enters to talk to Bess, and he reminds her that Porgy is "temporary." Bess wants to leave Crown forever ("Oh, what you want wid Bess?") but Crown makes her follow him into hiding in the woods.
*
Scene 3 - Catfish Row, a week later, just before dawn. Jake leaves to go fishing with his crew, and Peter returns from prison. Bess is lying in Porgy's room, delirious. Serena prays to remove Bess's affliction ("Oh, doctor Jesus"). The Strawberry Woman and the Crab Man sing their calls on the street, and Bess soon recovers from her fever. Bess talks with Porgy about her sins ("I wants to stay here") before exclaiming "I loves you, Porgy." Porgy promises to protect her from Crown. The scene ends with the hurricane bell signaling an approaching storm.
*
Scene 4 - Serena's Room, dawn of the next day.The residents of Catfish Row drown out the sound of the storm with prayer. A knock is heard at the door, and the chorus believes it to be Death ("Oh there's somebody knocking at the door"). Crown enters dramatically, seeking Bess. The chorus tries praying to make Crown leave, causing him to goad them with the un-Christian "A red-headed woman make a choo-choo jump its track." Clara sees Jake's boat turn over in the river, and she runs out to try and save him. Crown says that Porgy is not a real man, as he cannot go out to rescue her from the storm. Crown goes himself, and the chorus finish their prayer. Clara dies in the storm, and Bess will now care for her baby.
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"There's a boat dat's leavin' soon for New York" with Damon Evans and Cynthia Haymon in the Glyndebourne Production |
Act III
*
Scene 1 - Catfish Row, the next night.The chorus mourns Clara and Jake ("Clara, don't you be downhearted"). Crown enters to claim Bess, and a fight ensures, which ends with Porgy killing Crown. Porgy exclaims to Bess "You've got a man now. You've got Porgy!"
*
Scene 2 - Catfish Row, the next afternoon.A detective enters and talks with Serena and Maria about the murders of Crown and Robbins. They deny knowledge of Crown's murder, causing the detective to question an apprehensive Porgy. He asks Porgy to come and identify Crown's body. Sportin' Life tells Porgy that corpses bleed in the presence of their murderers, and the detective will use this to hang Porgy. Porgy refuses to identify the body, and is arrested for contempt of court. Sportin' Life forces Bess to take cocaine, and then tells her that Porgy will be locked up for a long time. He tells her that she should start a new life with him in New York with the dazzling "There's a boat dat's leavin' soon for New York". She shuts the door on his face, but he knows that doubt at Porgy's return will make her follow him.
*
Scene 3 - Catfish Row, a week later.Porgy returns to Catfish Row richer, after playing craps on the street with his loaded dice. He gives gifts to the residents, and does not understand why they all seem so downhearted. He sees Clara's baby is now with Serena and madly asks where Bess is. Maria and Serena tell him that Bess has run off with Sportin' Life to New York in the trio "Bess is gone." Porgy calls for his goat cart, and leaves for New York to find Bess in the closing song "Oh Lawd, I'm on my way".
Gershwin first expressed interest in composing the opera upon reading Heyward's
Porgy in 1926, and quickly dispatched a letter to the author. Though initial meetings were promising, Gershwin was in no hurry to write the opera, and Heyward soon collaborated with Dorothy in writing a play named
Porgy, which opened in 1927.
After consulting with Gershwin, Heyward sold the story rights to
Porgy in the fall of 1932 to
Al Jolson, who had a desire to team with
Jerome Kern and
Oscar Hammerstein II to create a musical on the subject with Jolson playing the lead role in
blackface. Initial enthusiasm for the proposed musical soon waned, however, leaving Gershwin alone to conceive a staged version of the work.
Original Broadway cast
Gershwin's complete work, running four hours (counting the two intermissions), was performed privately in a concert version in
Carnegie Hall, in the fall of 1935. A tryout performance took place at the Colonial Theatre in Boston, beginning on
September 30,
1935 and the Broadway premiere followed soon after on
October 10,
1935 at the
Alvin Theater in
New York City.
[Jablonski & Stewart, 227-229] In the course of rehearsal and tryout performances, Gershwin himself made numerous cuts and other changes designed to shorten the opera's running time and to tighten the dramatic action. The Broadway run lasted a mere 124 performances.
Rouben Mamoulian produced and directed and
Alexander Smallens conducted.
After the disappointing run on Broadway, a tour started on
January 27,
1936 in
Philadelphia and travelled to
Pittsburgh and
Chicago before ending in
Washington, D.C. on
March 21,
1936. During the Washington run, the cast—as led by Todd Duncan—protested segregation among the audience. Eventually management gave into the demands allowed for the first integrated performance at
National Theatre.
[Porgy and Bess, the Library of Congress American Memory project, Today in History, September 2.]This original production included:
*
Todd Duncan as Porgy
*
Anne Brown as Bess
*
John W. Bubbles as Sportin' Life
*
Warren Coleman as Crown
*
Henry Davis as Robbins
*
Ruby Elzy as Serena, Robbins' wife
*
Abbie Mitchell as Clara
*
Edward Matthews as Jake, Clara's husband
*
Helen Dowdy as the Strawberry Woman
*
J. Rosamond Johnson as the lawyer
*
Georgette Harvey as Maria
* The Eva Jessye Choir, led by
Eva JessyeAround 1938, the original cast reunited for a
West Coast revival; the exception being that
Avon Long took on the role of Sportin' Life. Long continued to reprise his role in several of the following productions.
Crawford's Broadway revival
The noted director and producer
Cheryl Crawford brought
Porgy and Bess back to Broadway in 1942 with an even more drastically cut version of the opera than the first Broadway staging, making it much more like the musical theater Americans were used to hearing from Gershwin. The orchestra was reduced, the cast was halved, and many recitatives were reduced to spoken dialog.
[Standifer, James. "The Complicated Life of Porgy and Bess." Humanities November/December 1997. (Also accessible on NEH website)]After trying out her concepts at a professional stock theater in
Maplewood, New Jersey in September 1941, the show opened at the
Majestic Theater on Broadway in January 1942.
[Victor Book of the Opera. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1968. pp. 326-328.] Duncan and Brown reprised their roles as the title characters, with Alexander Smallens again conducting. Etta Moten replaced Brown as Bess in June. This production was far more successful financially.
European premieres
On
March 27,
1943, the opera had its European premiere at the
Royal Opera House in
Copenhagen. This performance is also notable for the fact that it was put on by an all-white cast under the nose of the
Nazi occupiers, who put an end to its run after 22 sold-out performances.
[See note 3 above.]Other all-white or mostly-white productions in Europe took place in
Zurich in 1945 and 1950, and
Copenhagen in 1946.
1952 production
Blevins Davis and Robert Breen produced a revival in 1952 which restored much of the music cut away in 1942, along with many of the recitatives put back in place. But, with two condensed acts, it still was short of the full version composed by Gershwin, which had not yet been seen by the public. This tour however restored the work to its full operatic form, and
Porgy and Bess was warmly received through Europe.
[See note 3 above.] The
London premiere took place on
October 9,
1952 at the
Stoll Theatre, where it remained until
February 10,
1953.
[Martin, George. The Opera Companion to Twentieth Century Opera. New York: Dodd, Meade & Company, 1979. pp. 389-396]Notable also was this production's original cast, with
Leontyne Price as Bess,
William Warfield as Porgy, and
Cab Calloway as Sportin' Life. The small role of Ruby was played by a young
Maya Angelou. Price and Warfield met and wed while on the tour.
After a small tour of Europe financed by the
United States Department of State, the production came to Broadway's
Ziegfeld Theatre. It went on the road again in the fall of 1954 to Latin America, the Middle East and Europe, though Price and Warfield had since left the production. This tour saw
Porgy and Bess premiere at
La Scala in
Milan, in February of 1955. A historic yet tense premiere took place in
Moscow in December 1955, the first time an American theater group had been to the
Soviet capital since the
Bolshevik Revolution. Author
Truman Capote travelled with the cast and crew, writing an account of this event in his book
The Muses Are Heard: An Account.
Houston Grand's 1976 production
During the 1960s and early 1970s,
Porgy and Bess mostly languished on the shelves, a victim of its perceived condescending racism in a racially-charged time. Though new productions took place in 1961 and 1964 along with a
Vienna Volksoper premiere in 1965, these did little to change most Americans' opinions of the work.
The
Houston Grand Opera production which opened on
September 25,
1976 helped to turn the tide. For the first time, an American opera company had tackled the opera, not a Broadway production company. This production was based on Gershwin's original full score and did not incorporate the cuts and other changes that Gershwin himself had made before the New York premiere, but it allowed the public to take in the operatic whole as first envisioned by the composer. In this light, it became clear that
Porgy and Bess was indeed an opera, not a serious piece of musical theatre. This production won the Houston Grand a
Tony Award—the only opera ever to receive one—and a
Grammy Award.
Subsequent productions
Another Broadway production was staged in 1983. After toying with the idea of staging the opera since the 1930s, the
Metropolitan Opera staged the work in 1985, opening on
February 6. England's
Glyndebourne Festival tackled the work with a 1986 production. These productions were also based on the "complete score," without incorporating Gershwin's revisions. A semi-staged version of this production was performed at
the Proms in 1998. The centennial celebration of the Gershwin brothers from 1996–1998 included a new production as well. On February 24-25, 2006, the
Nashville Symphony Orchestra, under the direction of
John Mauceri, gave a
concert performance at the
Tennessee Performing Arts Center that restored the cuts made by Gershwin himself for the New York premiere, allowing the opera to be heard as the composer intended for it to be, for the first time since the first New York run.
From the outset, the opera's depiction of
African Americans attracted controversy. Problems with the racial aspects of the opera continue to this day.
Virgil Thomson, a white American composer, stated that "Folk lore subjects recounted by an outsider are only valid as long as the folk in question is unable to speak for itself, which is certainly not true of the American Negro in 1935."
[Thomson, Virgil in Modern Music, November-December 1935. pp. 16-17.] Duke Ellington stated "the times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms."
[Greenberg, Rodney. George Gershwin, Phaidon Press (1998), ISBN 0714835048 p. 196.] Several of the members of the original cast later stated that they, too, had concerns that their characters might play into a stereotype that African Americans lived in poverty, took drugs and solved their problems with their fists.
A planned production by the Negro Repertory Company of
Seattle in the late 1930s, part of the
Federal Theater Project, had been cancelled because actors were displeased with what they viewed as a
racist portrayal of aspects of African American life. The initial plan was that they would perform the play in a "
Negro dialect", which these
Pacific Northwest African American actors did not speak, and were supposed to learn from a dialect coach. Florence James attempted a compromise of dropping the use of dialect pronunciations, but ultimately the production was canceled outright.
[Becker, Paula. ""Negro Repertory Company" on HistoryLink.org, 10 November 2002.]Another production of
Porgy and Bess, this time at the
University of Minnesota in 1939, ran into similar troubles. According to Barbara Cyrus, one of the few black students at the university at the time, members of the local African American community saw the play as "detrimental to the race" and as a vehicle that promoted racist
stereotypes. The play was eventually cancelled due to pressure from the African American community, which saw their success as proof of the increasing political power of blacks in the
Twin Cities.
["The Way Spaces Were Allocated: African Americans on Campus, Part II" by Tim Brady, Minnesota, November-December 2002, University of Minnesota Alumni Association.]This belief that
Porgy and Bess was racist gained strength with the
American Civil Rights and
Black Power movements of the 1950s,
'60s and
'70s. In fact, as these movements advanced,
Porgy and Bess was seen as more and more out of place. When the play was revived in the 1960s, social critic and African American educator
Harold Cruse called it, "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western World."
[See note 3 above.] Author John Hope Franklin did not totally agree with this view, stating in his introduction to
Three Negro Classics "Sportin' Life clowns but not for white audiences. Porgy's clowning is a deliberate frustration of white power. Porgy also plays Uncle Tom, but he is never servile and lives for no white master."
[See note 3 above.]Gershwin's all-black opera was also unpopular with some celebrated black artists.
Harry Belafonte declined to play Porgy in the late 1950s film version, so it was offered to
Sidney Poitier who regretted his choice ever after. Betty Allen, president of the Harlem School of the Arts, admittedly loathed the piece and
Grace Bumbry, who excelled in the 1985 Metropolitan Opera production as Bess, made the often cited statement: "I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come far too far to have to retrogress to 1935. My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not. Whether I sing it or not, it was still going to be there." [
1]
Over time, however, the opera gained acceptance from the opera community and some (though not all
["I Got Plenty O Nuttin" by the Reverend Phyllis L. Hubbell, sermon at the First Unitarian Church of Baltimore, given August 20 2000.]) in the African American community. Maurice Press stated in 2004 that
"Porgy and Bess belongs as much to the black singer-actors who bring it to life as it does to the Heywards and the Gershwins."
[Press, Maurice. "George Gershwin and African American Music. New MusicBox, 8 July 2005.] Indeed, Ira Gershwin stipulated that only blacks be allowed to play the lead roles when the opera was performed in the United States, launching the careers of several prominent opera singers.
During the era of
apartheid in
South Africa, several South African theatre companies planned to put on all-white productions of Porgy and Bess.
Ira Gershwin, as heir to his brother, consistently refused to permit these productions to be staged.
In the summer of 1934, George Gershwin worked on the opera in
Charleston, South Carolina. He drew inspiration from the James Island
Gullah community, who he felt had traditions that were reminiscent of Africa. This research added to the authenticity of his work.
The music itself reflects his New York jazz roots, but also portrays southern black traditions. Gershwin modeled the pieces after each type of
folk song that the composer knew about;
jubilees,
blues, praying songs, street cries, work songs, and spirituals are blended with traditional
arias and
recitatives.
In addition to being influenced by New York jazz and southern black music, many biographers and contemporaries have noted that for many numbers Gershwin borrowed melodies from
Jewish liturgical music. Gershwin
biographer Edward Jablonsky has claimed that the melody to "It Ain't Necessarily So" was taken from the
Haftarah blessing [Jablonski, Edward. Gershwin. New York:Doubleday, (1987). Cited in Benaroya, Adam (May 2000). "The Jewish Roots in George Gershwin's Music". I.L. Peretz Community Jewish School. Retrieved January 2, 2005.], and others have attributed it to the
Torah blessing.
[Pareles, Jon (January 29, 1997). History of a Nation in Its Song to Itself . New York Times. Retrieved February 21, 2006.] Allusions to Jewish music have been detected by other observers as well. One musicologist detected 'an uncanny resemblance' between the folk tune
Havenu Shalom Aleichem and the spiritual
It Take a Long Pull to Get There [Whitfield, Stephen J. (September 1999).].
The score made use of
leitmotifs, which are introduced as the theme of a song. They themselves are not folk melodies, but draw inspiration from them in such a way that genuine folk music is recalled.
Use of leitmotif
George Gershwin introduces leitmotifs early in the opera to establish characters musically, and uses an intertwining of these themes to show conflict between characters. The best example of this is after the aria
"There's a boat dat's leaving soon for New York" in Act III Scene ii.
Bess' idea of Porgy is expressed by snippets their
duet "Bess, you is my woman now," in which they pledge their fidelity to one another:
(
Listen)
Her idea of Sportin' Life is shown through snippets of his
aria "There's a boat that's leavin' soon for New York" in which the drug peddler tries to persuade Bess to leave Catfish Row with him:
(
Listen)
Bess's difficult decision to follow him is represented by a conflict of these two melodies. The first is heard in a sparse and distant
orchestration:
(
Listen)
Sportin' Life is sure that Bess will follow him, and the quiet cocaine motif is heard. Then his own song is heard in a dazzling, overblown
orchestration, complete with swaggering rhythms:
(
Listen)
This contrast represents Sportin' Life's successful corruption of Bess's love for Porgy.
 |
The cover of the Glyndebourne album |
Main article:Porgy and Bess discography
Days after the Broadway premiere of
Porgy and Bess with an all-black cast, two white opera singers,
Lawrence Tibbett and
Helen Jepson, both members of the
Metropolitan Opera, recorded highlights of the opera in a New York sound studio, released as
Highlights from Porgy and Bess. Members of the original cast were not recorded until 1940, when
Todd Duncan and
Anne Brown recorded selections of the work. Two years later, when the first Broadway revival occurred,
Decca rushed other members of the cast into the recording studio to record other selections not recorded in 1940. These two records were marketed as a two volume 78 rpm set "
Selections from George Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess". After LP's had begun to be manufactured in 1948, the recording was transferred to LP, and subsequently, to CD.
Although there was an initial feeling by members of the jazz community that a Jewish piano player and a white novelist could not adequately convey the plight of blacks in a 1930s Charleston ghetto, jazz musicians warmed up to the opera after twenty years.
Louis Armstrong and
Ella Fitzgerald recorded
an album in 1957 in which they sang and scatted Gershwin's tunes. The next year,
Miles Davis recorded
a seminal interpretation of the opera arranged for
big band.
In 1959, Columbia Masterworks released a soundtrack album of the film version of "Porgy and Bess", which had been made that year. It was not a complete version of the opera, nor was it even a complete version of the film soundtrack, which featured more music than could be contained on a single LP. The album remained in print until the early 1970's, when it was withdrawn from stores at the request of the Gershwin estate. It is the first stereo album of music from "Porgy and Bess" with an all-black cast.
Sammy Davis, Jr., however, was under contract to another recording company, and his vocal tracks could not be used on the album.
Cab Calloway substituted for Davis on the soundtrack album.
In 1963,
Leontyne Price and
William Warfield, who had starred in the 1952 world tour of "Porgy and Bess", recorded their own album of excerpts from the opera for
RCA Victor. None of the other singers from that production appeared on that album, but
John W. Bubbles, the original Sportin' Life, substituted for Cab Calloway (who had played Sportin' Life onstage in the 1952 production). The 1963 recording of "Porgy and Bess" excerpts remains the only official recording of the score on which Bubbles sings Sportin' Life's two big numbers.
In 1951, Columbia Masterworks recorded a 3-LP album of what was then the standard performing version of "Porgy and Bess" - the most complete recording made of the opera up to that time. It was billed as a "complete" version, but was complete only insofar as that was the way the work was usually performed then. (Actually, nearly an hour was cut from the opera.) This album featured more of Gershwin's original
recitatives and orchestrations than had ever been heard before on records. It was produced by
Goddard Lieberson, who was then committed to putting on LP shows that had not been recorded in that medium. The recording was conducted by Lehman Engel, and starred
Lawrence Winters and
Camilla Williams, both from the
New York City Opera. Several singers who had been associated with the original 1935 production and the 1942 revival of "Porgy and Bess" were finally given a chance to record their roles more or less complete. The album was highly acclaimed as a giant step in recorded opera in its time, and was re-released at budget price on the Odyssey label in the early 1970's. It has subsequently appeared on CD on Sony's Masterworks Heritage CD series, and on the Naxos label as well. The album is not sung in as directly "operatic" a style as later versions, treading a fine line between opera and musical theatre.
The first complete recording of the opera, with an all-black cast, was made by the
Cleveland Orchestra under
Lorin Maazel in 1976, in time for the U.S. Bicentennial. It starred Willard White singing his first Porgy, and
Leona Mitchell as Bess. The recording was praised by critics for its performance quality and racial significance, but at the same time was highly criticized by some for not bringing out the "jazzier" qualities of the score.
The
newest (2006) and first complete recording of the opera restoring the cuts Gershwin had made for the 1935 première was made by the
Nashville Symphony Orchestra under
John Mauceri in
2006 and features Alvy Powell as Porgy, Marquita Lister as Bess,
Nicole Cabell as Clara and Robert Mack as Sportin' Life. It was issued by
Decca.
Operatic purists have found the best recordings to be those produced by the
Houston Grand Opera in 1977 and
the Glyndebourne album from 1989. These three latest recordings restore the full score of Gershwin's opera, music which had never before been performed in the United States.
Film and television
A
1959 film version was produced by
Samuel Goldwyn, but plagued with problems. Rouben Mamoulian, who had directed the 1935 Broadway premiere, was hired to direct the film, but was subsequently fired in favor of director
Otto Preminger for daring to suggest that the film be made on location in
South Carolina after a fire on the sound stage destroyed the film's sets. Goldwyn, who never liked making films on location, considered Mamoulian's request a sign of disloyalty. Opera singers dubbed the songs for
Sidney Poitier's Porgy and
Dorothy Dandridge's Bess, as well as for
Ruth Attaway's Serena and
Diahann Carroll's Clara (although Ms. Carroll can sing, her voice was not considered operatic enough). The Gershwin estate was disappointed with the film, as the score was edited to make it more like a
musical. Much of the music was omitted from the film, and many of Gershwin's orchestrations were either changed or completely scrapped. It was pulled from release in 1974, and prints can now only be seen in film archives.
In 1993, the Glyndebourne stage production of "Porgy and Bess" was greatly expanded scenically and
videotaped in a
television studio. It was telecast by the BBC in England and by PBS in the United States. It was directed by
Trevor Nunn and featured a cast of American singers (with the exception of Willard White, who is Jamaican but sounded American, as Porgy. Cynthia Haymon sang the role of Bess.). Nunn's "opening up" of the stage production was considered highly imaginative, his cast both sang and acted well, and the three hour production retained nearly all of Gershwin's music, heard in the original 1935 orchestrations - including the opera's sung
recitatives, which had occasionally been turned into spoken dialogue in earlier productions. The 1993 "Porgy and Bess" was subsequently released on
VHS and
DVD, and is, so far, the only version of the opera to appear in those formats. It has won far greater acclaim than the 1959 film, which was widely panned by most critics for allegedly not being entirely faithful to Gershwin's opera, for refining the language grammatically, and for being staged in what they called an "overblown" manner.
In 2002, the
New York City Opera telecast its new version of the Houston Opera production, from the stage of
Lincoln Center. This version featured far more cuts than the previous telecast, but, like all stage versions produced since 1976, used the sung recitatives and Gershwin's orchestrations.
While not an adaptation,
Sesame Street parodied the song "A Woman is a Sometime Thing" in season 36 of the show.
Hoots the Owl sang to
Cookie Monster about how "A Cookie is a Sometimes Food".
Suites
Gershwin prepared an orchestral suite containing music from the opera after
Porgy and Bess closed early on Broadway. Though originally titled "Suite from
Porgy and Bess", Ira later renamed it "
Catfish Row".
In 1942 Robert Russell Bennett arranged a medley (rather than a suite) for orchestra which has often been heard in the concert hall, known as
Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture. It is based on Gershwin's original scoring, though for a slightly different instrumentation.
Morton Gould also arranged an orchestral suite in the 1950s.
Porgy and Bess contains many songs that have become popular in their own right, becoming standards in jazz and blues in addition to their original operatic setting.
Some of the more popular songs include:
* "
Summertime", Act I Scene 1
* "A Woman is a Sometime Thing", Act I Scene 1
* "My Man's Gone Now", Act I Scene 2
* "It Take a Long Pull to Get There", Act II Scene 1
* "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'", Act II Scene 1
* "Buzzard Keep on Flyin'", Act II Scene 1
* "Bess, You Is My Woman Now", Act II Scene 1
* "Oh, I Can't Sit Down," Act II Scene 1
* "It Aint Necessarily So", Act II Scene 2
* "What you want wid Bess", Act II Scene 2
* "Oh, Doctor Jesus", Act II Scene 3
* "A Red-Haired Woman", Act II Scene 4
* "There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York", Act III Scene 2
* "Bess, O Where's My Bess?", Act III Scene 3
* "I'm on my way", Act III Scene 3
Sarah Vaughn's rendition of "It Ain't Necessarily So" and
Billie Holiday's version of "Summertime".
Frank Sinatra also had recorded "Summertime".
Janis Joplin recorded a
Blues rock version of "Summertime" with
Big Brother & The Holding Company.
Billy Stewart's version became a
Top 10 Pop and
R&B hit in 1966 for
Chess Records.
"Summertime" vies with the
Beatles "
Yesterday" as one of the most popular
cover songs in popular music, with an estimated 2,500 different versions recorded. Even seemingly unlikely performers such as
the Zombies have made recordings of it.
* Brady, Tim.
"The Way Spaces Were Allocated: African Americans on Campus, Part II".
Minnesota, November-December 2002, University of Minnesota Alumni Association.
*Jablonski, Edward.
Gershwin: A Biography. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday & Company, 1987. ISBN 0792421647
*Jablonski, Edward and Lawrence D. Stewart.
The Gershwin Years. Garden City, New Jersey: Doubleday & Company, 1973. Second edition. ISBN 0306807394
*Kimball, Robert and Alfred Simon.
The Gershwins. New York: Atheneum, 1973. ISBN 068910569X
*Schwartz, Charles.
Gershwin: His Life and Music. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1973. ISBN 0306800969
*Standifer, James. "The Complicated Life of Porgy and Bess."
Humanities November/December 1997. (Also accessible on
NEH website)
*
Southern Eileen.
The Music of Black Americans: A History. New York: W. W. Norton & Company; 3rd edition. ISBN 0393971414
*
Arthur Marx Goldwyn.
* Fisher, Burton D.
Porgy and Bess (Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series) Coral Gables, Florida: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2000. ISBN 1930841191.
Overview of the opera* Capote, Truman.
The Muses Are Heard: An Account. New York: Random House, 1956. ISBN 0394437322
Story of the 1955 Porgy and Bess
production in Moscow*
Article on Porgy and Bess by Jane Erb, hosted by classical.net
*
"Porgy and Bess: An American Voice". Online version of
PBS documentary on the opera
*
Hypertext edition of the novel Porgy*
"Jazzbo: Why we still listen to Gershwin" New Yorker article by Claudia Roth Pierpoint
