George Gershwin completed the music for his folk opera Porgy and Bess in 1935. The story was taken from a 1925 novel by DuBose Heyward, Porgy, which Gershwin read and loved. To the author Gershwin expressed his keen interest in creating an opera from the work, then Heyward and Ira Gershwin (George’s brother) collaborated on the libretto. The original opera lasts more than four hours (it has been revised several times since then), which made the opera difficult to finance and costly to mount. In fact the first opening of the opera ran for only 124 performances, unlike Gershwin’s popular musicals. Moreover, Gershwin had funded much of the run himself, depending on the popularity of songs like “Summertime” to help recoup his investment. The opera has gone on, however, to take a firm place in musical repertoire and has enjoyed performances all around the world.
From the beginning, the opera was not without controversy. Black leaders at the time felt that the work condescended to African-Americans, for the most part stereotyping them as drug users or hapless people stuck in poverty. Yet Gershwin believed in his project from the beginning: it was to be yet another example (much as “Rhapsody in Blue” merged classical and popular musical forms, for Gershwin a peculiarly American thing) of the maverick and unrepressed American spirit. In this case, a grandiose opera is spun from the words and singing styles (like DuBose Heyward, Gershwin spent time in Charleston, South Carolina, in an effort to absorb the musical language of the locals) of ordinary people whose lives were tinged on occasion with joy and jubilation as they were also often weighed down by tragedy. For Gershwin there was much psychology to explore in this work, and much to sing about. In its musical depiction of the residents of Catfish Row, Porgy and Bess has given those characters an important role in the varied social landscape that is America.
Today’s performance is a concert version arranged by Robert Russell Bennett, who frequently collaborated with Gershwin and arranged his works. This version features soprano and baritone soloists, chorus, and orchestra. The following are the tunes that Bennett included in his much-abbreviated compilation:
The opera begins on a stifling summer day on Catfish Row, a tenement street in Charleston. A woman (Clara) comforts her baby with a lullaby, “Summertime,” while her husband, Jake the fisherman, tries his own version of a lullaby, “A Woman is a Sometime Thing.” Porgy, a disabled beggar, organizes a game of dice, which turns out badly when Crown, a pugnacious bully enamored of Bess, charges fellow gambler Robbins with cheating. A fight ensues, and Crown kills Robbins.
The townspeople now become mourners at Robbins’ funeral; they sing a spiritual “Gone, Gone, Gone.” A cup is passed around to collect money to defray the costs of the burial, and the people are encouraged to “fill up the saucer till it overflow.” If the people come up short, the “Lawd will fill de saucer.” A succeeding scene finds Robbins’ wife Serena lamenting the loss of her husband in “My Man’s Gone Now.” All the while, Bess has been sitting off to the side, not fully a participant in community life but the subject of much attention. She suddenly starts singing “Oh, the Train is at de Station” (AKA “Promise Land”), and she gains the support—vocal and social—of the entire gathered crowd.
The fishermen return to their work, and Porgy—despite his physical disability, probably paraplegia, and the goat cart that provides mobility for him—expresses his buoyant view of life in “I Got Plenty O’ Nuttin’.”
People prepare to attend a picnic on a nearby island, and drug-dealing Sportin’ Life approaches Bess with an offer to take her with him to New York. But an attentive Porgy grabs the man’s arm, scaring him off for the moment, as Porgy turns to Bess to pledge his troth in the song “Bess, You is My Woman Now.” Meanwhile, the chorus of townspeople, excited to board the boat heading to the picnic site, excitedly sing “O, I Can’t Sit Down.”
The picnic turns out to be a joyous affair, and despite their Christian notions of propriety and modesty the townspeople unabashedly sing “I Ain’t Got No Shame.” Sportin’ Life has joined the people at the picnic and takes an opportunity to present his own, cynical views of Bible teaching in “It Ain’t Necessarily So.”
Time passes. Crown has been killed by Porgy, and a great storm has destroyed lives and livelihoods in Catfish Row. Sportin’ Life, still in Charleston, tells Bess that Porgy will be incarcerated for a long time and lures her again to New York with him (“There’s a boat dat’s leavin’ soon for New York”). Finally she succumbs, heading for the seductive city to the north with Sportin’ Life just before Porgy gets out of prison. When he hears the news, underterred, the irrepressible Porgy jumps into his goat cart as he sets off to search for Bess while singing “Oh, Lawd, I’m on my Way.”