A lullaby sung over a cradle in a courtyard — "and the livin' is easy" (1935)
Summertime, sung by Clara in the opening scene; one of the most recorded songs ever written
Opera · Opera in English
Porgy and Bess
30 September 1935, Colonial Theatre, Boston; Broadway 10 October 1935
George Gershwin · libretto by DuBose Heyward, lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin
Gershwin's "folk opera", set in a tenement courtyard in Charleston, about a disabled beggar who takes in the woman left behind when her violent lover goes on the run. It lost money in 1935 and was long dismissed as a Broadway show with pretensions; it is now staged as the great American opera, helped by songs that escaped into the jazz repertoire.
How to spot them
- ▸Catfish Row, a courtyard in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s
- ▸A beggar who gets about in a cart pulled by a goat
- ▸Gershwin required classically trained African-American singers, and wrote that condition into the licence
- ▸A crap game, a hurricane, a picnic on Kittiwah Island and a killing
- ▸Ends with the hero setting out for New York, which he has just been told is a long, long way
Arias & moments — listen
"It ain't necessarily so" — a dope peddler entertains a church picnic by doubting the Bible (1935)
Sportin' Life's song on Kittiwah Island
"I got plenty o' nuttin', and nuttin's plenty for me" — a beggar counts his blessings to a banjo (1935)
The hero's song opening Act 2
"You is my woman now" — a duet sealing a couple the neighbours never expected (1935)
The Act 2 love duet
"There's a boat dat's leavin' soon for New York" — a peddler talks a woman into leaving, with happy dust (1935)
Sportin' Life's Act 3 temptation
"My man's gone now" — a widow keens over her husband's body while the neighbours take up a collection (1935)
Serena's lament, a slow waltz with a wailing glissando
Quick-fire facts
- •The source is DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy and the 1927 stage play he wrote with his wife Dorothy.
- •The lyrics are shared between DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin; Heyward wrote 'Summertime' and 'My man's gone now'.
- •It tried out in Boston on 30 September 1935 and opened at the Alvin Theatre on Broadway on 10 October, running 124 performances and losing its investors' money.
- •Todd Duncan created Porgy and Anne Brown created Bess; the chorus was drawn largely from the Eva Jessye Choir.
- •Gershwin spent the summer of 1934 on Folly Island off Charleston, listening to Gullah singing and shouting.
- •Gershwin died of a brain tumour in July 1937, aged 38.
- •The Metropolitan Opera did not stage it until 1985, fifty years after the premiere.
- •'Summertime' has been recorded thousands of times — by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald with Louis Armstrong, and Janis Joplin among many others.
Drill it — 8 cards
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Sources
- Grove Music Online (Oxford Music Online) — Gershwin, George: Porgy and Bess
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Porgy and Bess: opera by Gershwin
- Joan Peyser — The Memory of All That: The Life of George Gershwin