Opera has not been historically known for diverse and ethical representation. Similarly, the Met’s selection of “Porgy and Bess” to open its 2019 to 2020 season provides a locus for deeper conversation on race and gender in art and beyond. While Sidney Poitier played Porgy, the disabled peddler protagonist, in the 1959 movie, Harry Belafonte famously refused, objecting to the opera’s perpetuating harmful stereotypes.Īt the same time, however, Gershwin’s insistence that the opera feature only an African-American cast and framing this profile of a poor African-American community as quintessentially American was itself a radical statement in his day. It is inescapably a story told through the eyes of the three white men and white women who wrote the novel, play, libretto and music.
It is the story of a poor African-American community on the coast of South Carolina, speaking in the Gullah dialect, and every aspect of this opera has been scrutinized. Written in the 1930s, George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” has always been controversial.
And as the Metropolitan Opera opens its new season with “Porgy and Bess,” opera can be a lens used to confront broader social questions of race, representation and community identity. At its best, opera provides a window into the past and a mirror into our present. And yet the high drama and emotion, always a little extra, is also deeply human. From the outside, it appears to be a relic of Gilded Age opulence and irrelevant. It was a commercial failure in its first run on Broadway - but despite that rocky start, Porgy and Bess went on to become one of the most-performed works in theater history.Opera is an oft-maligned and misunderstood art form. But the work has sort of always been outside category."īorrowing minor chords from his Jewish heritage, call-and-response from black churches he'd visited and dashes of jazz, Gershwin's new music was completely original and very American. "It wasn't a musical work per se, and it wasn't a drama per se - it elicited response from both music and drama critics. "It crossed the barriers," says theater historian Robert Kimball. Was it opera, or was it simply an ambitious Broadway musical? Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, based on DuBose Hayward's successful novel of the same title, tells the story of poor, crippled Porgy and beautiful Bess, who runs away from the fast life to find sanctuary with Porgy and the residents of Catfish Row.įrom the very beginning, it was considered another American classic by the composer of "Rhapsody in Blue" - even if critics couldn't quite figure out how to evaluate it. Cab Calloway (center) as Sportin' Life in the 1953 revival of Porgy and Bess.
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