It was 1926 and it had been a busy day for George Gershwin. His new musical Oh, Kay! was in rehearsal, and when the composer went to bed that night, he took some light readings to fall asleep. Instead, he picked up Porgy a recently published novel by American writer DuBose Heyward.

Heyward’s wife, Dorothy, reported that, far from dozing off quickly, Gershwin “read himself wide awake” that night, gripped by her husband’s dark and gritty account of African-American life in buildings in Charleston, South Carolina. At four o’clock in the morning Gershwin knew the story was ideal for an opera and sent a letter to Heyward suggesting a meeting.

Not much came out of this first contact. For one thing, the Heywards were already adapting Porgy as a stage play, for Broadway production a year later. And Gershwin himself was wary of immediate collaboration. “He said it would take him a few years before he was technically ready to compose an opera,” DuBose Heyward later recalled.

When did Gershwin compose Porgy and Bess ?

In fact, it was seven years before Gershwin and Heyward finally set their sights on making an opera based on Porgy when, in October 1933, the pair signed a contract with the Theater Guild of New York to write the play, and Heyward began fashioning a booklet from his novel.

In all respects, the subject of the new opera was controversial. Murder, racial issues, domestic violence, prostitution, and drug addiction are all present in Porgy and Bess. Additionally, Gershwin insisted on an all-black cast, a far more radical stipulation for the white-dominated world of 1930s opera than it would be today.

What is Porgy and Bess on?

Still, Gershwin had a clear vision of what he wanted to accomplish by presenting Heyward’s story of a crippled beggar who finds temporary solace with Bess, an marginalized woman who struggles to break free from her dominating lover, Crown and drug addiction. In writing what he called a “folk opera”, Gershwin intended to “address the greatest number rather than the educated few” and to stage “100% dramatic intensity in addition to humor he found in Heyward’s novel.

To that end, Gershwin took a five-week trip to Folly Island near Charleston, living in a beachside cabin and mingling with the Gullah natives. Anxious to immerse himself in their way of life, he attends prayer meetings, listens to spirituals and studies local customs. Much of what he saw and heard ended up in Porgy and Bess. While some today might call it cultural appropriation, for DuBose Heyward it seemed different. “For George, it felt more like a homecoming than an exploration,” he wrote.

When and where was Porgy and Bess performed for the first time?

In September 1935, the opera in three acts was finished. After a private presentation at Carnegie Hall in New York, the public premiere took place on September 30 at the Colonial Theater in Boston, four days after Gershwin’s 37th birthday. It was immediately apparent that Porgy and Bess was by far the most ambitious work he had ever created, filled with wonderful jazz-influenced harmonies and powerful choral writing. But it was also very long – more than three hours, not counting two intervals.

Forty minutes of cuts were made for the New York premiere at the Alvin Theater on Broadway on October 10. As in Boston, the audience adored Porgy and cheered enthusiastically. But critical reaction has been mixed. “Gershwin doesn’t even know what an opera is,” sneered the influential Virgil Thomson. One of the most famous jazz conductor Duke Ellington complained of Gershwin’s “black negroisms” and his borrowings “from everyone in Liszt to Dickie Wells’ kazoo band.

Other reviews were more positive, with one acknowledging that Gershwin’s score for Porgy had an “astonishing fluidity”, another praising Rouben Mamoulian’s direction as “extraordinary in its invention”. But the negative reactions were enough to keep ticket sales below break-even for the production, and it closed after 124 performances – extraordinary for an opera, but modest by Broadway theater business standards.

Gershwin never saw Porgy and Bess on stage again – 18 months after it closed on Broadway, he died of a brain tumor. But the virtues of his “popular opera,” especially his unforgettable songs (some with lyrics by Gershwin’s brother, Ira), gradually won over critics. “Summertime,” “I Got Much O’ Nuttin,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” and others became popular hits and remain staples in the Great American Songbook. And though controversy remains over the portrayal of black characters in the opera by a white composer and librettist – “a white man’s view of black life,” writer James Baldwin called it – Porgy and Bess has long entered the operatic canon as a classic. “These characters”, as Stephen Sondheim once said, “are as alive as ever created for musical theatre”.

The best recordings of Porgy and Bess

Lorin Maazel (conductor)

Willard White (Porgy), Leona Mitchell (Bess); Cleveland Choir and Orchestra

Decca 478 5785

“Porgy is brilliant, a great grand opera,” Lorin Maazel once commented. His 1975 recording was Gershwin’s very first complete score, four decades after the work’s premiere. It remains Maazel’s finest achievement on record and a moving testament to the impact Porgy can have when taken seriously as visceral drama.

It was also the Cleveland Orchestra’s first opera recording, and its presence is palpable throughout. The percussion of the Act I intro, perfectly paced by Maazel, sizzles with intent, and brass fanfares slice like lasers through Act II’s “Oh, I can’t sit down.” No recorded orchestra plays this music better.

Another great asset is Leona Mitchell’s Bess. Spirited and vulnerable in her confrontation on Kittiwah Island with the bully Crown (the excellent McHenry Boatwright), Mitchell achieves the delicate combination of warm expressiveness and heartbreaking honesty in the pivotal “I love you , Porgy”. As Porgy, bass-baritone Willard White is solid as an oak tree, reaching a peak of dramatic involvement in the opera’s finale, where he and his goat cart set out to search for Bess in New York.

Below the main level, the cast has no weak links and many strengths. Among these, tenor François Clemmons’ drug dealer Sportin’ Life stands out. “That’s Not Necessarily So” is vividly characterized without resorting to caricature, and “There’s a Ship Leaving Soon” is sung with such victory that Bess’s capitulation is easier to understand than habit.

A young Barbara Hendricks, barely 26 at the time, is Clara in a sultry, fresh-voiced tale of “Summertime”, and the Cleveland Chorus also excels, despite occasional embarrassment about the vernacular pronunciation of residents of Catfish Row. His mournful chants of “Gone, gone gone” in the wake of Robbins’ murder are among the performance’s most emotional moments.

At the heart of it all is Maazel himself, his incisively idiomatic beats, his unerring sense of dramatic rhythm. His gift for balancing great forces is clearly enhanced by Decca’s excellent recording, which has classic analog richness.

Around the time of this set’s release in 1976, a reviewer referred to Porgy as “not just great American opera”, but “the only great American opera”. More than any other available version, Maazel’s recording seems to justify this verdict.

John DeMain (conductor)

RCA 88697985112

“At last the whole truth” was one critic’s verdict when Houston Grand Opera’s historic production of Porgy and Bess took the stage in 1976. It was the first time the opera had been staged in an absolutely comprehensive fashion. , and this recording of the cast crackles with theatrical energy. Donnie Ray Albert and Clamma Dale are excellent in the title roles, and bandleader John DeMain’s swashbucklers sound more like a Broadway pit band than a symphony orchestra. A slightly dry, sometimes harsh sound puts it just behind Maazel in the rankings.

Simon Rattle (conductor)

Warner Classics 9029590064

Simon Rattle ‘s Porgy derives from Glyndebourne’s classic 1986 production and has been widely acclaimed. Compared to Maazel, however, Rattle’s tempos are more extreme, sometimes over-exciting. Act I, for example, unfolds at Keystone Cops speed, sounding scrambled. The slow music is also sometimes over-processed, the big “Bess, you’re my wife now” sounds alarmingly like Puccini. But there’s no doubting the sparks that Rattle strikes, with a solid cast that includes Willard White and Cynthia Haymon in the title roles and a great chorus.

Alexander Smallens (conductor)

Naxos8110219-20

Have you ever wondered what the original Porgy and Bess looked like? This priceless reissue of Naxos includes all eight tracks recorded by role-writers Todd Duncan and Anne Brown for Decca in 1940, plus other historic Porgy performances. Brown and Duncan both sing with a remarkable tenderness and dignity that is hard to find today, and Alexander Smallens (who conducted the former) accompanies with effortless flexibility. This is a flagship package, but any Gershwin enthusiast will want it in their library.

And one to avoid…

This loud 2006 porgy is great, but it doesn’t go far enough. Conductor John Mauceri’s goal was to reconstruct the version of Gershwin’s opera heard by his original Broadway audience, and record only that. At least 40 minutes of cuts are the result, including most of the piano music from ‘Jazzbo Brown’ and Porgy’s wonderful ‘Buzzard Song’. Historically interesting, perhaps, but

no more than that.