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“Porgy and Bess” (1935)
Work suggested by ... Richard Lyttelton
Composer ... George Gershwin
“The opera Porgy and Bess is
particularly important because Gershwin specifically
states, in his notes, for it to be performed
entirely by black artists.”
His longest and most ambitious work, the American folk opera Porgy and Bess, by composer George Gershwin, premiered on October 10, 1935, at New York's Alvin Theater, with a Broadway style production directed by Rouben Mammoulian; orchestra conducted by Alexander Smallens; and a dramatic story-line set in Charleston, South Carolina, at the turn of the century, addressing complex issues of race that continue to resonate today. Only somewhat successful in its initial run of one hundred and twenty four shows, Porgy and Bess has since become widely recognized as an epoch musical event, and has been performed to adoring crowds from New York's Metropolitan Opera to the Vienna Volksoper and Milan's La Scala.
Based upon the best-selling novel Porgy, by DuBose Heyward, a white poet from South Carolina, Gershwin's discovery of Heyward's work was the result of a long search for a story that would allow him to draw upon "many kinds of music, black and white, Eastern and Western" in his composition, and to then "catch the rhythms of these interfusing peoples, to show them clashing and blending" as he brought it to the stage.
During a trip to a small island off the South Carolina coast, to research the music of his opera, Gershwin was reported by DuBose Heyward to have "joined in the rhythmic chanting, shouts, and clapping" of the local African-American community there, in a manner he also described as being "probably the only white man in America who could have done it," at that period in history. In 1930, Gershwin had received a commission from the Metropolitan Opera to write a grand opera, one distinctly American, but knowing that its practice of not allowing black performers would keep him from realizing his vision of an African-American cast, he declined.
Gershwin stated in a 1935 New York Times article, "because Porgy and Bess deals with negro life in America it brings to the operatic form elements that have never before appeared in the opera and I have adapted my method to utilize the drama, the humor, the superstition, the religious fervor, the dancing and the irrepressible high spirits of the race. If doing this, I have created a new form, which combines opera with theater, this new form has come quite naturally out of the material."
For many years to follow, due to the unavoidable racial challenges in America, Gershwin's epoch musical portrayal of Porgy would be performed with much greater frequency throughout Europe and, following World War II, among numerous other landmark influences it had continued to bring to the world, Porgy and Bess would become the first American theatrical performance to appear in the Soviet Union. Some fifty years after its 1935 Alvin Theater premiere, Porgy and Bess was first produced at the Metropolitan Opera, in New York.
About George Gershwin:
[Gershvin, Jacob] (b Brooklyn, 26 Sept 1898;
d Hollywood, 11 July 1937). American composer,
pianist, and conductor. Recognized as one
of the world's most gifted composers of concert
music by the age of thirty, Gershwin stated
"true music … must reflect the thought and
aspirations of the people and time. My people
are Americans. My time is today."
About Richard Lyttelton:
Richard Lyttelton is president of EMI Classics, in London. Originally joining the company in 1974, Lyttelton began his tenure as head of its venerable classics division in 1988. With a heritage spanning more than one-hundred years, the vast recorded catalog of EMI Classics encompasses legendary performances by opera star Enrico Caruso, pianist Arthur Rubinstein, violinist Jascha Heifetz, cellist Pablo Casals, and conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, as well as the more recent classical works of Sir Paul McCartney.
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