Opera on Catfish Row - UNCG Campus Weekly UNCG Campus Weekly March 16, 2010 by Campus Weekly Staff “Porgy and Bess,” the classic George Gershwin opera that introduced “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So” into the American songbook, will be performed at Aycock Auditorium Sunday, March 21. The 3 p.m. matinee, part of a national tour marking the 75th anniversary of the work, is the fourth performance of the 2009-2010 University Concert & Lecture Series. Tickets for the event are $28-35 and are available at 4-4849 or boxoffice.uncg.edu . Set along “Catfish Row” in segregated Charleston, S.C., the opera details the relationship between Porgy, a street beggar, and Bess, a prostitute. Written and performed in English, the folk opera is beloved for its memorable characters and enduring songs.

In addition to “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” the opera also includes the famous songs “I Got Plenty of Nuttin’,” “I Loves You, Porgy” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now.” This production of “Porgy and Bess” is produced by Michael Capasso, general manager of New York’s Dicapo Opera Theatre. The production also includes talent with local ties. Philip Boykin, who plays the role of “Crown,” and Peter MacBeth, the show’s technical director, are both graduates of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. After this performance, one show remains in the UCLS season. Moscow Festival Ballet presents “Coppelia” on Wednesday, April 14, at 8 p.m. Tickets are on sale . For more information, visit ucls.uncg.edu . Send this article by email What is your name? Please indicate below the emails to which you want to send this article: Opera on Catfish Row Enter one email per line. No more than 5 emails.

Porgy and Bess | opera by George Gershwin | Britannica.com opera by George Gershwin Brock Peters Porgy and Bess, dramatic folk opera in three acts by George Gershwin . Its English libretto was written by DuBose Heyward (with lyrics by Heyward and Ira Gershwin ), based on Heyward’s novel Porgy (1925). The opera—which premiered at the Alvin Theatre in New York City on October 10, 1935—is considered to be the first great American opera. It contains many beloved musical numbers, including the arias “ Summertime I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’. ” Background and context In 1926 George Gershwin wrote to Heyward about collaborating on an operatic version of Porgy. Heyward was enthusiastic, but Gershwin’s other obligations delayed work until 1934. That summer Gershwin and Heyward worked together on an island near Charleston , South Carolina . There the Brooklyn-born composer hoped to absorb the feeling of the Southern setting and the accent and rhythms of African American speech. The ambience was inspirational; Gershwin finished the three-hour opera within a year.

George Gershwin, working on the score for Porgy and Bess, 1935. Pictorial Parade Although the writing had proceeded smoothly, casting proved more difficult. Once he had assembled a cast of African American singers who could successfully balance jazz and operatic singing, it became clear that the opera world was not ready for a “black opera,” and the jazz world was not ready for opera at all. Most frustrating of all was that various Broadway producers with whom Gershwin had worked successfully for years insisted that he hire only white singers and put them in blackface . Only after much negotiating and a refusal to compromise on his black cast did Gershwin manage to arrange for an opening on Broadway, where his own reputation could carry the show. Even then, he lost money on the production, only recouping his expenses by the separate popularity of “ Summertime ” and other tunes from the opera when they were published separately as jazz songs. Similar Topics Madama Butterfly Porgy and Bess met with limited success, running for only 124 performances; although that was an unusually large number for a new opera, it was small for a Gershwin show on Broadway.

Jazz fans were apparently put off by the work’s serious tone and opera fans by its saucy voice. At the time, some African American observers felt that the work stereotyped their culture , presenting it as one involving drinking, gambling , violence, and drug dealing. Others were pleased that African Americans were at last being portrayed in a serious stage work of operatic scope. Tap dancer John Bubbles (John William Sublett) as the drug dealer Sportin’ Life in George … Carl Van Vechten Collection/Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Digital file no. van 5a51768) Cast and main vocal parts Bess, Crown’s girlfriend, then Porgy’s (soprano) Robbins, a Catfish Row resident (tenor) Clara, Jake’s wife (soprano) Jake, a fisherman (baritone) OPERA NEWS - The Renovation of Catfish Row January 2012 — Vol. 76, No. 7 The Renovation of Catfish Row Porgy and Bess is back on Broadway in a new production, directed by Diane Paulus, that offers an unconventional — and controversial — take on a classic of the American theater.

FOSTER HIRSCH reports. A scene from Diane Paulus's 2011 Porgy and Bess production at A.R.T. in Cambridge, Massachusetts © Michael J. Lutch 2012 Norm Lewis and Audra McDonald as Porgy and Bess in Paulus's production © Michael J. Lutch 2012 Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier, Bess and Porgy in Otto Preminger's 1959 film © Columbia Pictures/Photofest 2012 Neutrality about Porgy and Bess is impossible. From the 1935 premiere right up to the present, when a controversial production, staged by Diane Paulus, is opening on Broadway, the show elicits fiery debates. Should the work be performed as opera with recitatives, as its composer, George Gershwin, originally intended? Or is it better served in musical-theater fashion, with spoken dialogue between numbers?

Did a quartet of white artists — Jewish New Yorkers George and Ira Gershwin collaborating with old-school Southern aristocrat DuBose Heyward (the author of Porgy, a 1925 novel) and his wife, Dorothy (coauthor with her husband of Porgy, a 1927 play) — create a true work about black characters? Or did they concoct a pageant of demeaning racial stereotypes? To its fervent admirers Porgy and Bess is an unparalleled triumph. To its detractors it is an indigestible stew. Each of the major productions that preceded Paulus's current Broadway version, which is billed as The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess, was significant in its own way. The original 1935 staging was performed on Broadway with recitatives. (Gershwin cut forty-five minutes of the score after the four-hour opening-night tryout in Boston.) In 1942, producer Cheryl Crawford removed the recitatives and presented the show as a high-end Broadway musical. From 1952 to 1956, in a U.S.

government-sponsored production by Robert Breen and Blevins Davis, the show was performed and applauded at many of the world's leading opera houses, including La Scala. During these years, Porgy and Bess was a roving goodwill ambassador — an assignment it would not have won in the Civil Rights era, when its Washington sponsors might have been concerned that the work could be used as anti-American propaganda: this is how white America has segregated its black underclass. After the release of Otto Preminger's film version in 1959, there were no major productions until 1976, when Houston Grand Opera mounted a nearly complete version to wide acclaim. In 1985, at long last — fifty years after its premiere — the work arrived on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera, in a production by Nathaniel Merrill that many considered ponderous and miscast. Trevor Nunn, a master director of Broadway and West End pop operas, staged the work in an uncut four-hour version at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1986.

His scenically expanded, filmed-for-television adaptation in 1993 featured an opening set in a low dive — where the cast seems to be enacting a charade of blackness, sexy and violent, for white audiences — and a finale in which Porgy tosses away his cane, walking upright into the future. This is now the most readily available version. Porgy and Bess created its own rules, fusing opera, jazz, blues, spirituals and Broadway. At its core, however, there are sensitive issues of racial representation. "Porgy was hailed [in 1925] as a fresh interpretation of the Southern Negro," writes Frank Durham in his 1954 biography of DuBose Heyward. "It is; but it is also a deceptive interpretation. Praise was accorded Heyward's sympathetic picture of the Southern Negro, his understanding of the racial psychology.... He presents us with all the detail of firsthand observation of the underworld Negro in a Southern city — a new subject; and to him and the reader this Negro is a human being with emotional problems worthy of serious consideration.

But the Negro is to Heyward still an exotic, a picturesque representative of an alien culture, interesting for his humanity, yes, but distinctive mainly as superb material for art." A scene from the original 1935 Broadway production of Porgy and Bess, directed by Rouben Mamoulian and designed by Sergei Soudeikine © Photofest 2012 Is it any wonder that a cool, objective reaction to this problematic landmark is hard to come by? In the interest of full disclosure, let me state that I am neither a musicologist nor an opera aficionado but a film historian and the biographer of Otto Preminger, who directed the 1959 film of Porgy and Bess. The film's legendary producer, Samuel Goldwyn, in order to secure the rights from the hard-bargaining Gershwin Estate, signed a contract under the terms of which rights reverted to the estate after fifteen years. The result was that, except for rare isolated screenings, the film has been unavailable — in effect, banned — for more than three decades.

It is unfortunate that the Gershwin Estate has prevented generations of filmgoers from seeing, and judging for themselves, Preminger's film, which is at once elegant and stirring. Yet the estate has sanctioned the new Broadway venture, entrusting the property to a new team for a valid reason; as Robert Kimball, artistic advisor to the Ira and Leonore Gershwin Trusts, told me, "We signed off to a (mostly) black creative team [Paulus's collaborators, playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, musical adapter Diedre Murray and choreographer Ronald K. Brown, are African–American], because we had received such requests for years, and we had been resistant. We thought, 'Okay, let's see what they can do.'" The Paulus team launched its production with a public-relations disaster. In an August 5 interview with Patrick Healy in The New York Times, while the show was in rehearsal for its August 17 pre-Broadway tryout at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, the collaborators adopted a we-know-better-than-the-authors stance, which was also reflected in commentary in the A.R.T. program book.

"We are trying to create a more dramatically complete version that will be the most powerful experience in terms of story and characters for a twenty-first-century audience," Paulus said. "Different things need to be adapted and changed for different reasons," Parks claimed. "There are several what I would call 'anthropological moments' in the original, meaning moments created by people who were probably not deeply familiar with any African–American community…. And there are moments that need additions/rewrites/tweaks for pure dramaturgical reasons." Costar Audra McDonald complained that Bess is "often more of a plot device than a full-blooded character." The Times article enflamed Stephen Sondheim, who, in a widely quoted letter to the paper, expressed dismay at "the disdain that Diane Paulus, Audra McDonald and Suzan-Lori Parks feel toward the opera itself. Ms. Paulus says that in the opera you don't get to know the characters as people. Putting it kindly, that's willful ignorance.

These characters are as vivid as any ever created for the musical theatre, as has been proved over and over in productions that may have cut some dialogue and musical passages but didn't rewrite and distort them." Underlying the Paulus team's grievances is a resentment of white artists for co-opting a story about African–Americans. "Yes, Porgy and Bess was created by white guys, and that's just fine," Harold Prince, Sondheim's premier collaborator and one of the most influential directors in the history of the American musical theater, recently told OPERA NEWS. "Suzan-Lori Parks certainly has the talent to write her own libretto for a new black folk-opera, and she should do just that. But she should have passed on tampering with this one. To my mind, Porgy and Bess is sacred text. How can she or Diane Paulus know what George Gershwin had in mind?

They don't have a clear line to him." Simon Estes and Grace Bumbry in Porgy and Bess's 1985 Met premiere OPERA NEWS Archives To be sure, a doomed love story between a crippled black beggar and a drug-addicted woman with a past might offend some black artists and viewers. But I don't think the material can be altered or "reimagined" in order to bring it up to speed with contemporary standards of political correctness. The work was not written as, nor can it be transformed into, a social protest drama or a naturalistic portrait of actual black life in early-twentieth-century Charleston. It is a folk opera, a fable, a stylized period piece with archetypal characters. By the time I saw a tryout performance in Cambridge in September, most of the rewriting had been scuttled. But other strategies for aligning the show with "a twenty-first-century audience" remained. The team's revisionism was fully displayed in the opening moments. Gone was the traditional Catfish Row set, replaced by an abstract panorama of pockmarked gray boards designed by Riccardo Hernandez. This choice eliminated Catfish Row from Porgy and Bess.

The set suspended the action in limbo. Any remnant of DuBose Heyward's rich evocation of the "Negro Charleston" of another time had been deleted. There was no sense, as in Heyward's novel, of a vibrant black community filled to the brim and bursting with life. Into this anonymous nowhere, Clara (Nikki Renée Daniels) entered to sing "Summertime" in a casual, no-opera-here style — a clue to the audience that the show they were about to see, scored for a modest-sounding eighteen-piece orchestra, would be a bare-bones musical-theater rendering. "I asked myself, 'Why is [Clara] singing so high?'" the production's musical adapter, Diedre Murray, offered by way of explanation. "'That would make the baby wake up. It has to be a lullaby.' So I took the whole thing down. And then I decided I wanted to use an accordion." In the service of misplaced realism, "Summertime" was radically diminished, and Clara, in an underpopulated Catfish Row in which no children appeared, unnecessarily and distractingly sang to a real baby.

If realism was the goal, where was the evocation of a steamy Charleston dusk down by the wharf? The lush descriptions of weather in Heyward's novel were nowhere to be found in Christopher Akerlind's minimalist lighting scheme. Too, if authenticity to black experience was the production's goal, why was all trace of Gullah (the regional dialect Charleston blacks at the time would have spoken) removed? (Diction was upgraded throughout: Sportin' Life became Sporting Life, "I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'" became "I Got Plenty of Nothing.") Heyward's inspiration for Porgy was a real-life Charleston resident named Samuel Smalls, a beggar who traveled around town on his knees on a goat-driven cart. In recent productions, Porgy has walked with a cane; the Paulus team went one better, inserting dialogue in Act II about Porgy getting a new brace that permits him to walk in a more upright way. Their choice reminded me of what a disgruntled film executive said to Otto Preminger after the first screening of the film: "The ending is too downbeat.

Can't you make Porgy just get up and walk at the end?" The Paulus team not only upgraded Porgy's walking, it barely mentioned his begging and eliminated his belief in omens and superstitions. It was almost as if Paulus and her collaborators were ashamed of Porgy and wished him to be someone else. Their Porgy, Norm Lewis, has an innate dignity and command, and he would have endowed the character with these qualities (as Sidney Poitier did in Preminger's film) even in an interpretation more faithful to Heyward. As her pre-opening comments to the Times indicated — she observed that "the opera has the makings of a great love story ... that I think we're bringing to life" — McDonald also resisted Heyward's original characterization. With Suzan-Lori Parks, she was hoping to write a backstory for Bess, and to find ways of making the character more modern and independent. There was no backstory in the performance I saw, except the one that was already there, in plain sight, in Bess's dialogue and lyrics, and in the responses of other characters.

McDonald's interest in reinterpreting her character, along with the other claims launched by the Paulus team for "correcting" Porgy and Bess, raised some hotly contested issues about revival etiquette. How much creative rearrangement is permissible before the dividing line between reinterpreting and rewriting disappears? There can't be any hard-and-fast rules, and the only question worth asking is whether a revival enhances or illuminates a show, or distorts it. Porgy and Bess collaborators George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin © Photofest 2012 Sometimes, perhaps all too rarely, a revival has been produced as a plain and simple tribute: let's put on this show because it is terrific as it is, and if we do our job right, today's audience will appreciate the work as much as we do. More often, a revival is instigated because someone has a new insight. In recent years, this has usually meant locating a dark underlining unsuspected or not fully revealed in the original: Nicholas Hytner's Carousel is a prime example.

If a new approach, however, begins with a conviction that the work is seriously wounded — that it is out of date and requires major overhauling — why bother? That kind of distrust in the material only leads to tinkering that more likely than not will tarnish rather than restore the work's luster. Because it has areas of possible discomfort for African–American audiences, Porgy and Bess poses particular problems for any revival. But as indicated by the difficulties the Paulus team has encountered in revisiting the work — writing and then abandoning or streamlining new material — the show offers little latitude for making major changes. Indeed, a follow-up interview with the Times in November revealed second thoughts about the sets and reduced orchestrations. A truly radical approach to reviving this opera as a Broadway offering would be a production that would demand of the audience that it rise to the troubled, towering majesty of the work itself and meet this long, grandiose, controversial work on its own terms. McDonald, in fact, played the love story forcefully, and her two duets with Porgy, "Bess, You Is My Woman Now" and "I Loves You, Porgy," were thrillingly performed in the A.R.T.

mounting. She gave poignant expression to Bess's longing to become part of a community — as Porgy's wife and as the adoptive mother of Clara's baby. But most of the time she seemed at war with the character as written. She didn't exude the charged eroticism that is the driving force in Bess's "backstory." And because of how she interpreted the role, as stronger and more self-aware than Heyward's character, it was difficult for her to play Bess's last scene. Like it or not, Bess's addictions to drugs and sex overcome her resolve, and she leaves Porgy and Catfish Row. McDonald's Bess indeed would have the courage to stay; Heyward's Bess does not. In Act I, the new production laid claim to two triumphant moments. In their reframing of Porgy's "I Got Plenty of Nothing," always a problematic number — "a happy darkie" song, as Parks describes it — the newcomers outwitted the show's creators. Emerging from offstage in evident post-coital pleasure, Porgy slyly said "nothing" when asked what he had been up to.

And rather than an uncomfortable spectacle of a crippled beggar celebrating his dispossession, the song became the joyful expression of the character's erotic bliss. Crisply orchestrated and performed, it was an authentic victory for the creative team, and for Norm Lewis. The other startling moment (conceived by the original writers, but realized here with vivid impact) was the sudden, engulfing silence at the first appearance of white characters, judged by the show's white creators as unworthy of the musical bounty they reserved exclusively for the denizens of Catfish Row. Paulus's staging underlined the fact that, in the world of Porgy and Bess, white men can't dance. In Act II at A.R.T., something almost mystical happened. The transporting power of the work itself, rising up against the challenges posed to it by this production, took over and carried all before it. And by the end, despite my gripes, I was quite moved. The timing is right for a new musical-theater Porgy and Bess. But the A.R.T. production, a would-be revisionist bonanza, was too often at cross-purposes with the material, and it was visually stingy.

The definitive Broadway incarnation for the twenty-first century — robust, show-wise, drenched with Southern atmosphere and sensuality — remains to be seen. FOSTER HIRSCH is a professor of film at Brooklyn College and the author of sixteen books on film and theater. Send feedback to OPERA NEWS . A tumultuous love-story from Catfish Row is Porgy & Bess A tumultuous love-story from Catfish Row is Porgy & Bess Leave a comment In February, the Toledo Opera brings the turbulent story of beggar Porgy and the wayward Bess to the stage. Gershwin’s opera, while socially controversial, has secured its place as a staple of Americana. Mixing together the struggles and soul of the inhabitants of Charleston, South Carolina, Porgy & Bess opens the eyes, ears and hearts of its audiences. Set in Catfish Row, the story is that of a love triangle between Crown, Bess, and the unsung hero, Porgy.

Sound and soul Canadian-American singer Othalie Graham, known for her critically acclaimed portrayal of the title role in Turandot, joins the Toledo Opera as the dogged Serena who in Graham’s own words, “is really the salt of the earth character” of this opera. Taking time from her rehearsal schedule, Ms. Graham shared some insight about the spirit of Gershwin’s opera, its unique sound and what it is that makes it such an American classic. This opera is known for its unique fusion of genres. How would you describe the sound of Porgy and Bess? Othalie Graham: The opera is such a wonderful, classic American opera. When Gershwin first thought of composing the opera it was in 1926 after reading the book Porgy. For him to write such a progressive story during that time is astounding. It does have a lot of jazz influences and of course incredibly catchy tunes that a lot of people know. So it’s really a family friendly opera. Porgy and Bess was originally recognized for pushing social boundaries. George Gershwin stipulated that the opera be performed only by a classically trained African-American cast. What do you think of that?

It’s absolutely amazing that for a world premiere in 1935, they were able to find an entire chorus, plus every single person on the stage minus two characters. Again, for him to stipulate that at that time is astonishing. To be touring in 1936, as we all know what was happening in that time, it’s just mind-blowing when you think about that now with so much racial inequality at that time, but yet this absolute hit opera with an all African-American cast is really encouraging. This opera quickly became an American classic. What made it resonate with such a large audience so deeply? I think because it was such a human story that has something in it that absolutely everyone can relate to; it’s easy to understand. This opera has real human characters that anyone off the street can just walk in and sit down and understand. It’s in English, and that’s great, this show is for everybody. With all of the human sentiment, it really touches every person in a different way. So it makes it more accessible to everyone. This really touches everyone’s basic humanity.

7:30pm Friday, February 12, 2pm Sunday, February 14 Student Night at the Opera showing, 7pm Thursday February 11 $30-$60 Catfish Row, symphonic suite (from… | Details | AllMusic google+ Description by Norbert Carnovale The Catfish Row Suite is Gershwin's own purely instrumental adaptation of selected scenes from his opera Porgy and Bess. There are several named sections. The first, "Catfish Row," opens with the opera's overture and includes the "Jasbo Brown Blues" for solo piano. The movement continues with "Summertime," whose melody is assigned to various solo instruments in the orchestra. "Porgy Sings" commences with "I Got Plenty of Nuttin'" in the banjo and continues with "Bess, You is my Woman Now." The "Fugue" is the one used as background music during the fight between Porgy and Crown and to accompany the ultimate death of Crown. "Hurricane" is extracted from the opening of Act 2, Scene 3; a lyrical English horn-and-string melody is followed by a terrifying depiction of the storm.

"Good Morning, Brother," also called "Occupational Humoresque," includes "Good Morning, Brother," "Sure to Go to Heaven" (Children's Song), and the opera's finale, "Lord, I'm on my Way." According to Edward Jablonski, "Though a scissors-and-paste job, Gershwin's suite is a carefully thought out musical précis of the score. He extracted five sections and bridged them successfully in an impressive compendium including many instrumental passages that had been jettisoned in Boston...." The work also confirms that Gershwin, who was sensitive to criticism of his compositional skills and had set out to prove his abilities in Porgy and Bess, was both capable and imaginative as an orchestrator. Composer Robert Russell Bennett also prepared a suite from the opera, (Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture), which has enjoyed far more frequent performances than Gershwin's own suite. The Catfish Row Suite was first heard on January 21, 1936, in a performance by the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music.

Parts/Movements Gary Younge on the enduring controversy surrounding Porgy and Bess | Music | The Guardian Wednesday 25 October 2006 Keeping it real, or descending to stereotype? ... Porgy and Bess In 1955, the year that Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks refused to give up their seats to white people on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, an all-black cast took to the stage of Milan's La Scala to perform the theatre's first ever American opera, Porgy and Bess. Maya Angelou was among the cast, and wrote about the night with a characteristic lack of guile in her memoir, Singin' and Swingin' and Getting' Merry Like Christmas. "We had sung gloriously," she recalled. "Although we faced the audience, which was on its feet, yelling and applauding - we bowed to compliment each other.

We had performed Porgy and Bess as never before and if the La Scala patrons loved us, it was only fitting because we certainly performed as if we were in love with one another." There has long been a tension between the manner in which Porgy and Bess, written by George Gershwin and first performed in 1935, has been lauded by audiences in Europe even as it was loathed at home. Its European premiere was in 1943, in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, where it ran to sold-out houses for 22 nights before the Gestapo threatened to blow up the opera house. As well as La Scala, it has also performed at Vienna's Volksopera and was the first American production to play in the Soviet Union. This week, a new production opens in London's West End, directed by Trevor Nunn. Those who have been in its cast read like a who's who of African-Americans prominent in the arts. As well as Angelou, performers have included, at one time or another, Cab Calloway, Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge and Sammy Davis Jr.

The songs written for it, particularly Summertime and It Ain't Necessarily So, remain enormously popular. And yet, in the US, Porgy and Bess has long been steeped in controversy. To many African-Americans, it was little more than a high-class minstrel show - a distant cousin to Amos and Andy. "The times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms," said Duke Ellington after its premiere. And when the work was revived in the 1960s, the late social critic and author Harold Cruse called it: "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the western world ... Porgy and Bess belongs in a museum and no self-respecting African-American should want to see it or be seen in it." It is not difficult to see why African-Americans would find the play problematic. The play is set in Catfish Row, a rough African-American hamlet on the outskirts of Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1930s.

The story centres around Bess, a prostitute, her sometime lover and pimp, Crown, and Porgy, a physically handicapped beggar who rides around on a goat cart and has long been in love with Bess. Crown, guilty of murder, leaves town. Bess moves in with Porgy, and when Crown comes back for her, Porgy kills him in a fight. He is sent to jail for contempt after he refuses to identify Crown's body. Meanwhile, Sportin' Life, a showy, godless gambler and drug dealer, forces Bess to take cocaine, and finally persuades her to follow him to New York. Porgy returns from jail to find that Bess has gone. The play ends with Porgy calling for his goat cart and preparing to head to New York to find his love. Gershwin intended Porgy and Bess to be artistically radical: a "folk opera" fusing high and low cultures, gospel and jazz with classical styles. The trouble was he set to music almost every prevalent stereotype about African-Americans.

At a time when depictions of black life were rare, and positive ones were virtually non-existent, here was a production in which African-Americans were portrayed as criminal, sexually promiscuous low-lifes who lived in a moral squalor of their own making. Every conversation about black artistic life from the dawn of blues to hip-hop has contained some conflict between those who claim they are just "keepin' it real" and others who say they are playing to stereotypes. As a white man, however, Gershwin could not hide behind the shield of authenticity. That left him particularly vulnerable since the play was staged at the tail-end of an era of literary and artistic confidence and accomplishment among black Americans. "Folklore subjects recounted by an outsider are only valid as long as the folk in question is unable to speak for itself," argued Virgil Thomson, a white American composer, when Porgy and Bess first ran. "Which is certainly not true of the American negro in 1935." The previous decade had been dominated by the Harlem Renaissance, which saw the blossoming of such writers as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Alain Locke, Nella Larsen and Claude McKay.

These writers proved that African-Americans had a great deal to say. "We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual, dark-skinned selves without fear or shame," wrote Hughes in a manifesto in 1926. "If white people are pleased, we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly, too. If coloured people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on the top of the mountain, free within ourselves." As the 1930s dragged on, however, whether white people were pleased or not was not the point. The great depression meant they were broke, and the funds from wealthy, white patrons who had subsidised this renaissance soon dried up. In the very year that Hughes wrote his manifesto, Gershwin read Porgy, a novel by a white South Carolinian called DuBose Heyward. Gershwin said he started the book to read himself to sleep one night and ended up "reading himself wide awake".

Heyward saw himself as part of the primitivist movement, championed by the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Montaigne, that revered all that was reputedly "instinctive", "innate" and "essential" in the innocent animalism of the "noble savage", as personified by those of African descent. "I saw the primitive Negro as the inheritor of a source of delight that I would give much to possess," Heyward once wrote. While Gershwin did not necessarily sign up to this philosophy entirely, he clearly sympathised with it. "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," he told the New York Times in 1935. "And I have adapted my method to utilise the drama, the humour, the superstition, the religious fervour, the dancing and the irrepressible high spirits of the race." When the play opened in 1935 at the Colonial theatre in Boston, it got a 15-minute ovation. From there it went to the Alvin Theatre on Broadway and then on tour - often to segregated theatres - to mostly glowing reviews.

But with little commercial success, it was, in the decades following the war, more likely to thrive before white European audiences than at home. As the civil rights movement took off, followed by black power, African-Americans' relationship to the play became particularly antagonistic. This would have been of great distress to Gershwin, who died in 1937, for his offensive views about black life were characteristic of liberal thinking at the time. The terms of his estate stipulated that the opera could only be performed with all-black casts in English-speaking countries. His refusal to use white actors in black face meant that a generation of African-American thespians could walk some of the most prestigious boards in the world. Liberalism, however, is not absolute but relative. As attitudes change and conditions progress what looked like noble intentions curdle into condescension. Like Harriet Beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, whose protagonist would become the by-word for submissive lickspittle in years to come, Gershwin's opera became a signifier of theatrical degradation for African-Americans. Many actors, for example, resented the repeated use of the word "nigger".

"Members did not like this but were afraid to object, that being the tenor of the times," recalled Eva Jessye, the first production's choral director. "But they could not bring themselves to speak it right out, so agreed to drown it out where ever and whenever it occurred ..." Harry Belafonte refused the role of Porgy in the 1959 film version (which won an Oscar, Golden Globe and Grammy). Sidney Poitier, who took the part instead, playing opposite Dorothy Dandridge, later said he wished he had turned it down too, telling Oprah Winfrey in a 2000 interview he felt coerced to take it. "There was almost no frame of reference for us except as stereotypical, one-dimensional characters," he said. But while the racial values that underpinned the play never endured, the music Gershwin created only grew in its appeal - particularly Summertime and It Ain't Necessarily So.

Just as the compelling narrative of Oliver Twist enabled the novel and play to persist beyond any general acceptance of the anti-semitic portrayal of Fagin, so by the 1980s African-Americans had started to believe that they could rescue the play from the anthropological cul-de-sac in which it had been parked. In 1976, the Houston Grand Opera used Gershwin's full score to create a staging for a new generation of African-Americans - and won a Tony and a Grammy. Productions at the New York Metropolitan and the Glyndebourne festival in England in the mid-1980s paved the way for a rehabilitation of sorts. Trevor Nunn's new London production will remove the recitatives and perform it as a musical. "The opera would only have been for small, privileged groups. What we wanted to do was widen the audience," says Gareth Valentine, the production's musical supervisor. Time has enabled many to understand Porgy and Bess as a period piece, rather than a reflection of commonly held contemporary views.

Grace Bumbry, who was born the year Gershwin died and played Bess at the Metropolitan in 1985, said: "I thought it beneath me, I felt I had worked far too hard, that we had come 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." Porgy and Bess is at the Savoy Theatre, London WC2, until March 31, 2007. Box office: 0870 164 8787. Today in pictures Fine Times On Catfish Row | Houston Press Fine Times On Catfish Row Or sign in with a social account: FACEBOOK GOOGLE + TWITTER YAHOO! Don't have an account yet? Sign Up › Connect. Discover. Share. Get the most out of your experience with a personalized all-access pass to everything local on events, music, restaurants, news and more.

Enter your email or sign up with a social account to get started FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ YAHOO! Don't have an account yet? Sign Up › Fine Times On Catfish Row Thursday, February 2, 1995 at 4 a.m. By Bruce Guynn In 1976, Houston Grand Opera gave new life to George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess when it staged the first full-scale version of the work in 40 years. Afterward, the opera gained increasing acceptance in the standard repertoire. Now, HGO has come up with a revisionist interpretation of Gershwin's classic that surpasses its earlier, ground-breaking work. Print Article HGO's latest Porgy, which premiered last Friday, is zestier and more innovative than the earlier production, last seen on the Houston stage in 1987. It also goes to greater lengths to rid the opera of the offensive stereotypes regarding the black community that have detracted from the work since its creation 60 years ago. Excellent singing, elaborate staging and delightful choreography make HGO's new Porgy a joy to watch from start to finish.

HGO general director David Gockley hired Hope Clarke to direct this new production, and the choice was an excellent one. Clarke possesses impressive credentials as a Broadway actress, choreographer and director. She received a Tony nomination for her choreography in Jelly's Last Jam and directed Opera Ebony's concert version of Porgy and Bess in Helsinki, Finland. Moreover, incredible as it may seem, she's the first African-American to direct a full-scale version of the opera. Gockley deserves special commendation for taking the long-overdue step of giving an African-American the opportunity to direct an opera dealing with life among the black Gullah community in the Carolinas in the 1930s. Clarke's refreshing vision of Catfish Row, the mythical fishing village where the opera is set, is based more on fact than stereotype. Earlier productions of Porgy have portrayed Catfish Row as an impoverished and dingy community, populated by shiftless ne'er-do-wells. But in the HGO production, Catfish Row, while a little worse for wear, is neat and clean.

And while it has its share of unsavory characters, such as Crown and the drug dealer, Sportin' Life, the vast majority of its inhabitants are hard-working, moral and upstanding. They also display a diversity in wealth as reflected in their dress. Upcoming Events Tickets Mon., Feb. 13, 7:00pm In the 1930s, the Gullahs of the Carolinas were only a few generations removed from Africa and had cultural ties with the West Indies. Hence, Clarke's adaptation of Porgy and Bess incorporates African and Caribbean rhythms as well as the familiar jazz and blues melodies that make up the bulk of the opera. These two new elements are most prominent in the scene depicting the picnic on Kittiwah Island. The beat of an African drum leads into a sequence where the picnic-goers dance enthusiastically to Calypso-like music. The inclusion of these African and West Indian elements add spice and authenticity to the opera without detracting from its integrity. The cast, for the most part, performs admirably. Alvy Powell is excellent as Porgy, the crippled beggar with a heart of gold.

His first act rendition of "I Got Plenty O' Nothin'," was rousing and lighthearted, even if it did lack a bit in vocal strength. However, he recovered nicely for his love duet, "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," near the close of the first act. His rendition of "Oh Lawd, I'm On My Way," at the opera's end was positively powerful. Marquita Lister turned in a fine, if slightly understated, performance as Bess, Porgy's ill-matched lover. Her singing was excellent, particularly in her first act love duet with Porgy and her second act duet with Sportin' Life, "There's a Boat That's Leaving Soon for New York." Her moving rendition of "I Loves You, Porgy" is also memorable. Larry Marshall portrays Sportin' Life and his interpretation of the cynical ballad, "It Ain't Necessarily So," was one of the highlights of Friday's performance. Not only did Marshall convey the proper degree of wit and skepticism in his rendition of the song, he also displayed a delightful dance step reminiscent of the late Cab Calloway.

About the only knock on his performance is that he came across as a tad too likable to be totally convincing as the sinister drug dealer who entices Bess to leave with him for New York after giving her cocaine. Angela Simpson, who portrays Serena, turned in the night's best performance. She captured the audience's affection early in the first act with her heartfelt and moving rendition of "My Man's Gone Now" and retained it throughout the opera. In the end, she received the most enthusiastic ovation. Stacey Robinson turned in an adequate performance in the primarily dramatic role of the murderous Crown, Porgy's chief rival for Bess' affection. Kimberly Jones as Clara offered a haunting rendition of the opera's signature number, "Summertime," at the outset of the first act. The staging decision to have her sing this ballad in a stunning scene depicting Catfish Row at sunrise was truly inspired. As is generally the case with an HGO production, the ensemble singing was outstanding. The orchestra, under the direction of conductor John DeMain, performed Gershwin's score with crispness and clarity.

For its first three operas this season, HGO used minimal sets; the return to more elaborate staging for Porgy and Bess is most welcome. Kenneth Foy's sets convincingly convey the flavor of a Southern fishing village in the early part of this century. And the depiction of the hurricane scene in the second act was electrifying. At the premiere, HGO used surtitles for only part of the performance. The explanation found on an addendum inside the program was that certain key textual passages proved difficult to project in the surtitle format. It was also mentioned that the opera is a familiar one, and that it is sung in English. Audience members were provided space on the addendum to record their opinions and convey them to HGO officials: here's a vote for complete surtitling. The text of any opera, no matter if it is sung in the audience's native language, is often difficult to understand. Surtitles can be extremely helpful in enhancing the audiences' understanding and appreciation of nearly any opera. But the lack of complete surtitling detracted only slightly from the performance.

HGO's new production of Porgy and Bess, if it doesn't quite fall in the "must-see" category, comes pretty darn close. Porgy and Bess plays through February 10 at the Brown Theater, Wortham Center, 500 Texas Avenue, 227-2787.

Question: Which opera is set in Catfish Row?
Answer: Porgy and Bess