“It was my idea that opera should be entertaining – that it should contain all the elements of entertainment. Therefore, when I chose Porgy and Bess (…) for a subject, I made sure that it would enable me to write light as well as serious music and that it would enable me to include humour as well as tragedy,” said Gershwin about the piece. Over the course of 1934 and 1935, he spent an unusually long time – eleven months – composing the work, and then another nine months perfecting the score. He had already found the storyline in 1926 after reading DuBose Heyward’s novel “Porgy”, immediately recognising its dramatic and operatic potential.

Porgy, a crippled beggar living on Catfish Row, a street on the Charleston waterfront, witnesses a murder and then shelters the murderer’s girlfriend, the lovely Bess. Their happiness appears to be complete when they adopt a child orphaned by a hurricane, but Crown, the murderer, has returned for Bess, and Porgy – defending his family – kills him. The police arrest him and interrogate him but, refusing to believe that a cripple could be the murderer, let Porgy go. The triumphant homecoming nevertheless turns tragic when he learns that Sportin’ Life, the drug pusher, has used subterfuge to lure Bess away to New York and force her back into a life of prostitution.

The original première of Porgy and Bess – considered a milestone in the history of American opera – was given in Boston on 30 September 1935, followed by, according to reports, a fifteen-minute standing ovation from the audience. The work was thoroughly modern in content, musical style, use of language, and also with respect to the ethnic background of its performers. Gershwin’s music contains both the past and the then-present of the music of the American continent: its roots extend back to include American Indian, African and African-American musical heritage, while the jazz influence is also strong. At the same time, the inspiration drawn from European music, especially from Ravel and Debussy, is undeniable.

The opera was first premièred outside of the United States in 1943 at the Danish Royal Opera in Copenhagen – with local singers – and continued for 22 performances until the occupying German forces had it removed from the repertoire by threatening to blow up the building if it was performed again. In 1952, the Everyman Opera Company commenced a multi-year tour of Porgy and Bess, and the film version released in 1959 won worldwide acclaim.

In Hungary, Gershwin’s work was first performed in a 1970 production of the Hungarian State Opera at the Erkel Theatre, directed by András Mikó. In a run of over 100 performances with a double cast, the title roles were sung by György Radnai and Ferenc Begányi in the role of Porgy and Erzsébet Házy and Éva Andor as Bess. A total audience of 28,000 later watched this same production in 1973, over the course of four sold-out evenings at the Szeged Open-Air Festival.

The Opera House revived Porgy and Bess in 1981, but, owing to the increasingly strict conditions laid down by the composer’s heirs, Hungarian viewers were unable to see it again until 1991, when it was performed featuring African-American guest artists on Margaret Island’s Open-Air Stage in Budapest. Gershwin himself had insisted that the white roles be played by white singers, and the African-American roles by African-American singers.

In a production fully in compliance with the composer’s stipulations, Porgy and Bess is being staged on Dóm Square in Szeged, the only European venue where it will appear in 2013. The production to be performed by New York’s Living Arts Inc. on 9 and 10 August – almost exactly forty years to the day after the Szeged première – not only honours Gershwin’s wishes in all respects, but has also enjoyed considerable success all over the world. The artists singing the lead roles are regular principals in the world’s major opera houses and have brought this production to the stage more than a thousand times on five continents in 17 countries, in front of a total audience of more than a million and a half people.

Source: szabadter.hu