Porgy and Bess Page 1

Porgy and Bess

Opera in three acts

Music

by

George Gershwin

Libretto by DuBose Heyward,

adapted from his novel, Porgy (1925)

Lyrics by

DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin

Premiere: Boston, September 1935

Adapted from the

Opera Journeys Lecture Series

by

Burton D. Fisher

Story Synopsis

Page 2

Principal Characters in the Opera Page 3

Story Narrative with Music Highlights Page 3

Gershwin and Porgy and Bess

Page 11

the

Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series

Published and Copywritten by

Opera Journeys

www.operajourneys.com

Porgy and Bess Page 2

Story Synopsis

The story of Porgy and Bess takes place in the

1920 s in Catfish Row, a racially isolated slum
neighborhood near Charleston, South Carolina.

Bess is a prostitute; her lover is Crown, a stevedore

prone to ferocious violence. Crown kills Robbins after
a dispute during the tensions of a crap game: Crown
flees after the murder. Porgy, a cripple, shows kindness
and humility to the beautiful but dissolute Bess, and
shelters her. Porgy and Bess fall in love: he protects
her against community reproach and the temptations
offered by Sportin’ Life, the local dope peddler.

Porgy urges Bess to attend a picnic with the

townsfolk at Kittiwah Island. Unbeknownst to her,
Crown has been hiding on the island. Despite her
genuine love for Porgy, Crown overcomes her
resistance, and she surrenders to him, and remains with
him on the island. Bess returns to Catfish Row,
trembling, sick, and delirious. Porgy intuitively knows
that Bess betrayed him, but he forgives her, reaffirms
his love for her, and nurses her back to health.

A hurricane erupts while Catfish Row fishermen

are at sea. Crown reappears and offers to brave the
storm to save the fishermen, at the same time, mocking
Porgy as a feeble and weak man. Crown survives the
storm and returns to reclaim Bess. When he arrives,
Porgy kills him.

The police find Crown’s body and arrest Porgy as

a suspect. A week later, Porgy is released and
reappears triumphantly on Catfish Row. He turns to
despair when he learns that Bess fled to New York
with Sportin’ Life. Even though Bess betrayed him,
Porgy loves her deeply: he mounts his goat cart and
leaves Catfish Row in search of Bess.

Porgy and Bess Page 3

Principal Characters in the Opera

Porgy, a cripple

Baritone

Crown, a stevedore, Bess’s lover

Bass

Bess, Crown’s girlfriend

Soprano

Robbins, a crap player

Baritone

Serena, Robbins’s wife

Soprano

Jake, a fisherman

Baritone

Clara, Jake’s wife

Soprano

Sportin’ Life, a dope peddler

Tenor

Peter, the honey man

Tenor

Lily, Peter’s wife

Mezzo-soprano

Frazier, a lawyer

Baritone

Residents of Catfish Row, Strawberry woman, the

crab man, Jim the cottonpicker, undertaker,

fishermen, children, stevedores, hucksters,

policeman, a coroner, detectives, and bystanders

TIME:1920s
PLACE: Catfish Row, a slum neighborhood near

Charleston, South Carolina

Story Narrative with Music Highlights

ACT I – Scene 1: Catfish Row

Catfish Row was formerly an upscale suburb

of Charleston, but it is now a slum neighborhood
inhabited by black African-Americans.

The Jasbo Brown Blues is heard as folks

indulge in impromptu dancing in the street.
Clara sings a lullaby to her baby, Summertime,
while in the background, a heated dice game is
in progress.

Jake, Clara’s husband, sings to the baby about

the guiles and wiles of women.

A Woman is a Sometime Thing

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Porgy, a cripple, arrives on his goat-cart. The

folks immediately tease him about his physical
disability, but he protests, assuring them that
he is a man with pride and self-respect: When
Gawd make him a cripple, He mean him to be
lonely.

Crown, a stevedore, arrives: he is drunk and

accompanied by his ostentatiously-dressed
girlfriend, the prostitute, Bess. Crown joins the
crap game, loses very quickly, and immediately
erupts into rage. He quarrels with Robbins,
accuses him of cheating, attacks him, and then
kills him with a cotton hook. Bess gives Crown
money: he flees and goes into hiding.

Sportin’ Life, the neighborhood dope

peddler with a devil-may-care philosophy, tries
to tempt the lonely Bess to go to New York with
him, but she refuses.

Police whistles are heard, and in fear, Bess

desperately seeks refuge. Neighbors spurn her,
but Porgy generously offers to share his room
with her.

ACT I – Scene 2: Serena’s room

The Catfish Row neighbors gather in

Serena’s room where her husband Robbins’s
body lies: there is a saucer on his chest to
collect donations for burial expenses; all sing
spirituals to mourn their friend and comfort his
widow.

Porgy arrives with Bess. He places money

in the saucer, and exhorts the others to do the
same: Overflow, overflow.

Two white detectives arrive, searching for a

suspect in Robbins’ smurder: they apprehend
the half-deaf old Peter as their “material
witness.” They also advise Serena that according
to law, Robbins’s body must be buried the next
day: the sympathetic undertaker, realizing that
not enough money has been collected for the
burial, agrees to bury Robbins and to wait for
the balance. Sorrowfully, Serena laments the

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loss of her husband.
My Man’s Gone Now

ACT II – Scene 1: Catfish Row in the morning

Jake and fisherman repair their fishing nets

and prepare to go to sea despite warnings about
impending September storms.

Porgy appears at a window and expresses

his contentment and happiness since Bess has
come to live with him.

Oh I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’

Sportin’ Life struts by, peddling dope. When

he blows white powder from his hand, Maria,
the cook, protests, admonishing him that
“nobody ain’ goin’ peddle happy dust roun’ my
shop”: she threatens him with a knife and he
flees.

Frazier, the lawyer, finds Porgy and offers

to sell him a divorce for Bess, pointing out that
it is much more difficult to divorce someone
who has never been married. Mr. Archdale
appears and offers to provide bond for the still-
jailed Peter. A buzzard is seen flying overhead,
and everyone becomes filled with premonitions
of evil: it would be bad luck if the bird should
alight near them: the Buzzard Song.

Sportin’ Life reappears, finds Bess, and

suggests that she leave Catfish Row and go to
New York with him. Bess, now content with
Porgy, declines his offer. Porgy warns Sportin’
Life to stay away from Bess: although a cripple,
Porgy is a powerful man; he frightens the dope

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peddler, who flees in terror.

Porgy and Bess become enraptured in their

new-found love: the sorrows of their past lives
have ended, and together, happiness has just
begun; they vow eternal love.

Bess You is My Woman Now

A jazz band heralds the Catfish Row

residents to a picnic on Kittiwah Island. Bess
tells Porgy that she wants to stay home with
him, but Porgy insists that she join the
picnickers and have a good time. As all the
Catfish Row residents start on their way to the
picnic, Porgy again celebrates his new-found
happiness with Bess: I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’.

ACT II – Scene 2: Kittwah Island that evening

All the picnickers sing and dance: I ain’t got

no shame.

Sportin’ Life delivers an amusing, skeptical,

and cynical sermon about the credibility of Bible
teachings.

It Ain’t Necessarily So

Serena denounces everyone as sinners:

Shame on all you sinners, further reminding
them that they must hurry to catch the boat or

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they will all be left behind on the island.

As Bess lingers, Crown, who had been

hiding on the island after he murdered Robbins,
suddenly appears to tell her that he will soon
return to Catfish Row for her. Bess pleads with
him to find another woman and let her remain
with Porgy and live a decent life. Crown berates
Bess, advising her that her living arrangements
with Porgy are temporary: they will cease the
moment he returns.

Nevertheless, Crown possesses a seductive

power over Bess: he reminds her that she is
his woman; Bess is unable to resist him and
surrenders to his wishes. The boat leaves the
island, and Bess remains with Crown.

ACT II – Scene 3: Catfish Row

It is dawn about a week later. Jake and the

fishermen prepare to go out on their boats
despite threatening storms.

Bess returned from Kittiwah Island, but

since then, she has been ill: her delirious voice
is heard from Porgy’s room. Serena, Porgy, and
others pray for her recovery: All right now. Dr.
Jesus done take de case.

In the background, Catfish Row comes to

life as morning cries are heard from the
strawberry woman, the honeyman, and the crab
man.

As Bess recovers, she calls for Porgy. Bess

admits she surrendered to Crown in fear for her
life. Porgy forgives her for betraying their love,
and tells her he will care for her: if Crown
returns again, he promises to protect her from
him.

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I Loves You Porgy

As the storm approaches, Clara watches the

sea anxiously. Suddenly, the fearful sound of
the hurricane bell is heard.

ACT II – Scene 4: Serena’s room

As the terrible storm rages outside, the

fishermen’s wives pray, fearing that Nature’s
anger has brought them to Judgment Day.

Crown arrives to reclaim Bess. He forces

his way into the room, taunts Porgy, calling him
a weak cripple, and then brutally pushes him
down.

Clara peers through the window and

becomes horrified: she sees her husband Jake’s
fishing boat floating upside down. She gives her
baby to Bess and rushes out. Only Crown
volunteers to help, and as he leaves, promises
Bess that he will return for her shortly.

ACT III – Scene 1: Catfish Row

The women mourn, fearing that Clara, Jake,

and Crown, have all been lost in the storm.

Sportin’ Life wanders in to report that Crown

has survived. Bess sings a lullaby to Clara’s baby:

Summertime

Crown appears, badly hurt, but stealthily

moving towards Porgy’s room where he expects
to find Bess. As he approaches the window,

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Porgy’s powerful arm extends, and seizes Crown
by the throat: Porgy plunges a knife into Crown
and kills him.

In triumph, Porgy proudly proclaims: “Bess,

you got a man now. You got Porgy.”
ACT III – Scene 2: Catfish Row.

The police arrive to investigate Crown’s

death, but find no clues to his murder. Serena
tells them that she was ill and knows nothing of
the death of the man, who, as everyone in Catfish
Row will swear, killed her husband Robbins.

The police suspect that Porgy knows

something about Crown’s murder: he is dragged
away to identify Crown’s body. Porgy protests,
telling them that he refuses to look at the dead
Crown; his apprehension was inflamed by
Sportin’ Life who told him that Crown’s wound
will begin to bleed when the man who killed
him comes near the body. As Porgy leaves, Bess
reprises Serena’s doleful lament when her
husband Jake died: My Man’s Gone Now.

Bess, in confusion and despair, believes that

Porgy is gone forever. Sportin’ Life exploits
her sorrow and loneliness and offers her some
“happy dust” to relieve her anxiety. Again,
Sportin” Life tries to persuade her to escape
with him to New York: There’s a Boat That’s
Leaving Soon for New York. As Sportin’ Life
departs, he leaves a package of dope on a step.
Bess, unable to control her will power, yields
to temptation, takes the package, and carries it
with her to her room.

ACT III – Scene 3: A week later.

Life in Catfish Rows seems to have returned

to normal: children dance and sing in the street
as people greet one another cordially.

Porgy returns in high spirits: he had refused

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to look at Crown’s body, was cited for contempt,
and was ordered to spend one week in jail. Porgy
brings presents for all his friends, his sudden
wealth the result of successful crap-shooting
while in jail.

Porgy calls for Bess, but she does not

answer. He pleads for information as to her
whereabouts and learns that Sportin’ Life finally
seduced Bess: She fled with him to New York.
Porgy is heartbroken and yearns for Bess:
Serena condemns her, but Maria excuses her.

Porgy inquires about New York, and learns

that it is thousands of miles away. Undaunted,
he mounts his goat cart: Porgy is determined
and resolved to find Bess wherever she may be:
when he finds her, he will bring her back to
Catfish Row.

All the neighbors, sharing Porgy’s hope and

optimism, help speed him on his journey to find
Bess: Oh, Lawd, I’m on My Way.

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Gershwin………………..and Porgy and Bess

T

he American composer, George Gershwin,

1898 – 1937, nee Jacob

Gershovitz, was the son of Russian-Jewish
immigrants who settled in New York in the
1890s. At the age of 12, the young Gershwin
exhibited exceptional musical talents at the
piano: he immediately pursued studies with
teachers who astutely recognized his potential,
and encouraged and exposed him to classical
music and the concert stage. Gershwin
eventually became an accomplished and skilled
pianist, at the same time, continuing intensive
studies in musical theory and harmony.

However, Gershwin was drawn to American

popular music, particularly inspired by the
songs of those early icons flourishing in the
early 20

th

century: Jerome Kern and Irving

Berlin. In 1914, just short of his 16th birthday,
he followed his muse and left high school to
work as a song promoter for the Tin Pan Alley
music-publishing firm of Joseph Remick. Two
years later, he published his first song, When
You Want ‘Em You Can’t Get ‘Em. Although the
song was unsuccessful, it demonstrated his
creative talent, attracting the attention of the
operetta composer Sigmund Romberg who
included one of his songs in his Broadway show,
The Passing Show of 1916. During those early
years, Gershwin eked out a living as a rehearsal
pianist, but religiously continued his studies of
piano, harmony, theory, and orchestration.

In 1918, at the age of 20, Gershwin became

a staff composer at T. B. Harms, the leading
publisher of music for the Broadway stage.
Before long, he composed his first hit song,

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Swanee (1918), performed by Al Jolson in the
Broadway show, Sinbad. Shortly thereafter, he
composed his first full Broadway score, La, La
Lucille (1919). Those early successes led to a
contract with the producer George White to
compose music for the George White’s
Scandals of 1920; thereafter, Scandals became
an annual revue that included dozens of
Gershwin songs.

In 1922, Gershwin composed Blue

Monday, a 20-minute opera written in the
African-American music style: it became part
of George White’s Scandals of 1922, later re-
titled 135

th

Street. The work attracted the

attention of the Scandals’ conductor, Paul
Whiteman, who commissioned him to
compose a symphonic, jazz-style work:
Rhapsody in Blue (1924).

Throughout the flourishing Broadway era of

the 1920s and 1930s, Gershwin became one of
Broadway’s leading lights, eventually
composing the scores for 22 successful shows,
among them Lady, Be Good! (1924), containing
the songs Fascinating Rhythm, Oh, Lady, Be
Good!, and The Man I Love, the latter written
for the original production but not included.

In 1924, Gershwin began his collaboration

with his brother, Ira, (1896–1983), and together
they created Tip Toes (1925), Oh, Kay! (1926),
Strike Up the Band (1927), Funny Face (1927),
and Girl Crazy (1930). Their most successful
show, Of Thee I Sing (1931), a satire about the
American political system, became the first
musical to win a Pulitzer prize in drama.
Gershwin songs also appeared in the motion
pictures Delicious (1931), Shall We Dance
(1937), A Damsel in Distress (1937), and the
Goldwyn Follies (1938).

A

s a teenager, Gershwin was inspired by

African-American music, its very

distinctive ragtime, stride, and blues genres
becoming a musical vocabulary that he would
later incorporate in many of his compositions.

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The blues musical genre evolved from the

expressive folk music of African-Americans:
it developed after the Civil War, largely based
on the songs of agricultural field workers. As

the blues genre developed in the early 20

th

century, its poignant lyricism became combined
with music expressing emotional sadness and
melancholy, all embellished with melodic
ornamentation, and syncopation.

The jazz musical genre was also developed

by African-Americans, but it was strongly
influenced by European harmonic structures
which were combined with African rhythmic
structures. Jazz, as a musical art form, is
virtually impossible to define: for most of jazz
history, it has been generally accepted that it is
a style of music in which the performer plays
melodic variations based on specific harmonies
against a regular rhythmic pulse. Nevertheless,
like all music, jazz has evolved and transformed,
thus precluding an absolute definition. As such,
there are a host of jazz styles such as avante-
garde, modernist, progressive, traditional,
classical, and many others.

Jazz began to flourish in the early 1920s

when its inherent structural techniques were
steadily becoming proficient, sophisticated, and
harmonically more daring. In an orthodox
approach to music, the artist fundamentally
expresses the creative wishes of the composer:
in jazz, the performer is an improviser, or his
own composer. In the 1920s and 1930s, George
Gershwin, obsessed with the genre, had many
prominent jazz and blues masters to emulate
and learn from: Fats Waller, Duke Ellington,
Louis Armstrong, and Fatha Hines.

Gershwin explicitly identified himself as a

“jazz” composer, and in the process, profoundly
influenced the destiny of American music:
Gershwin, through his compositions, became a
powerful force in nourishing and revitalizing
the idiom. His first successful instrumental
work, the Rhapsody in Blue (1924), introduced

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jazz into the concert hall. Its premiere was
conducted by Paul Whiteman, and was billed as
“An Experiment in Modern Music,”its
purported intent, to demonstrate that jazz, then
considered a form of rhythmic dance music that
was anathema to most “serious” musicians and
critics, could indeed be sophisticated, refined,
and a serious form of music when transformed
into a symphonic context.

G

ershwin composed in two musical

languages: popular music, and

classical concert music; in both instances, he
was a trailblazer, innovator, and pioneer.

Gershwin’s primary successes were in the

Broadway musical for which he became a master
of all the popular song idioms, among the many
styles, the striding one-step, and the more
contemplative ballad. But of equal importance
were his “serious” compositions in which he
blended classical music forms and techniques
with the stylistic nuances of popular music and
the jazz idiom. As a result, his musical
eclecticism has perplexed critics who search
for a specific “Gershwin identity” or “native
style.” Nevertheless, no matter the idiom, his
captivating music never ceases to mesmerize
the American public who seem to always find it
fresh and ravishing. Europeans, seemingly
unimpeded by the need to identify between
“high” or “low” artistic genres, have long
considered Gershwin one of greatest song-
writers of the 20

th

century: ardent fans have

included prominent classical composers such
as Francis Poulenc, Arnold Schoenerg, the
creator of the 12 tone and serial musical
techniques, and Maurice Ravel, who modeled
his Piano Concerto in G on Gershwin idioms.

Beginning in 1924, together with his

brother Ira, now his permanent lyricist and
artistic collaborator, they created hundreds of
songs for dozens of Broadway shows: their
songs were about romance and love. Ira provided
lyrics with his trademark verbal ingenuity and a

Porgy and Bess Page 15

profoundly sensuous yearning. George
composed music with beauty, warmth, and
tenderness, much of which combined the
rhythms and harmonies from the rich African-
American musical styles of blues and jazz.

Nevertheless, it was specifically after the

success of the Rhapsody in Blue that new
patterns emerged in Gershwin’s composing life.
He never lost his touch and continued to
compose prolifically for both Broadway and
Hollywood, but he devoted unbridled energy to
his more serious compositions in the classical
vein: the Piano Concerto in F for piano and
orchestra (1925), the Preludes for Piano
(1926), the tone poem An American in Paris
(1928), and the Cuban Overture (1932).
Although African-American music was indeed
the major source of his inspiration, his music
shows strong influences from Igor Stravinsky,
Claude DeBussy, Piotr Tchaikovsky, and even
from the anguish and suffering so prevalent in
Jewish chants: in 1929 he contracted to
compose a “Jewish opera,” The Dybbuk, for
the Metropolitan Opera, but he never fulfilled
that commission.

Few events in the history of American music

were more shocking and unexpected than
Gershwin’s sudden death: he was still youthful,
vibrant, vigorous, and on the threshold of so
many new musical achievements. During 1937,
although he had been experiencing discomfort,
dizziness, and emotional despondency, he
continued to work. Inspired by the string
quartets of Arnold Schoenberg, his Hollywood
neighbor and sometime tennis partner, he
considered writing a quartet as well as a ballet
for RKO’s Goldwyn Follies to be called Swing
Symphony. But in July he fell into a coma. A
brain tumor was diagnosed and emergency
surgery performed. On the morning of July 11,
1937, George Gershwin died at the age of 38,
another musical genius, like Mozart, Schubert,
and Chopin, whose early, premature death, left
the music world mourning, wondering what

Porgy and Bess Page 16

other musical treasures could have been added
to his already monumental legacy.

A

bout eighty years ago, in New York, a group

of writers and intellectuals,

self-proclaimed “modernists,” were embarking
on an experiment whose purpose was to integrate
the rich fabric of American Negro culture into
the arts. Carl Van Vechten, a novelist, music and
drama critic, became their chief architect,
enthusiastically calling upon African-American
artists to celebrate the priceless treasures of black
Americana in the arts: “The squalor of Negro
life, the vice of Negro life, offer a wealth of novel,
exotic, picturesque material to the artist.”
Additionally, he questioned if “Negro writers
were going to write about this exotic material
while it is still fresh or will they continue to make
a free gift of it to white authors who will exploit it
until not a drop of vitality remains?” Their
adventure became known as the “Harlem
Renaissance”: it incited controversy and
argument, nevertheless, it became a springboard
and inspiration for many contemporary writers
to adjust their focus toward the rich treasures
within African-American culture: Sherwood
Anderson’s Dark Laughter (1925), Van Vechten’s
Nigger Heaven (1926), and from the same era,
Edwin DuBose Heyward’s Porgy (1925).
Edwin DuBose Heyward, 1885-1940, a native
of Charleston, South Carolina, grew up as the
poorly educated scion of a family whose
fortunes had been reversed by the Civil War and
its ensuing depression.

At the age of 17, he worked for a cotton

factory on the Carolina waterfront where he
keenly observed the plight of black stevedores
and fishermen. Likewise, in Charleston, he
witnessed its exotic mix of racial life where
former slaves and former owners lived within a
dynamic geographic proximity, yet were
separated by racial and social restrictions,
impasses, and divides; in the downtown

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neighborhoods African-American domestics and
doctors lived side-by-side with those same
aristocratic families who formerly commanded
their lives and their labor.

Heyward observed African-Americans

folklore and culture with a passionate curiosity
that served to kindle his literary inspiration and
imagination. Ultimately, his literary objectives
became lofty and ambitious, as he explained in
an essay titled The New Note in Southern
Literature:

“In the well-bred southern drawing room of

a decade ago, the ‘Negro Problem’ was never
mentioned. And so the authors who undertook
to interpret Negro life divided themselves into
two general classes: those who deal altogether
delightfully with the Negro of the past, and
those who took the Negro’s sense of humor as
a keynote, caricatured it beyond recognition,
and produced a comedian so detached from life
that he could be laughed at heartily without the
least disloyalty to the taboo. Now the task that
confronts the South today is simply this: to
readjust its standards of good taste in manners,
if you will. But for art, its own code of good
taste, based upon a fearless and veracious
moulding of the raw human material that lies
beneath its hand.”

Heyward was searching for a truth in the

African-American experience, rather than a
stereotype. His mission was lofty and noble:
he intended to expand “the standards of good
taste” in Southern drawing rooms, and make “a
fearless and veracious molding of . . . raw human
material.” Heyward strove for that “truth” he
was seeking which materialized in his first
novel, Porgy (1925).

Porgy became a literary triumph for

Heyward, but immediately, the novel was thrust
into broiling and indignant controversy. Porgy
was considered an unflattering portrait of an
American ethnic group who were living under
the worst possible circumstances, poor and

struggling victims of the social structure whose

Porgy and Bess Page 18

cast of characters, for the most part, were
portrayed as dissolute, dishonest, and vicious.
To its antagonists, Porgy portrayed stereotypes
and was considered a failure, neglecting to
address positive elements within the ethnic
group: those proud heirs of ambitious, aspiring,
and motivated pre-war free black elites, or the
successful descendants from Reconstruction-
era politicians and businessmen.

However, there were critics who felt that

Heyward had created a truthful work of art full
of complex meanings that was irresistibly
appealing to both white and black audiences
through its penetrating insight into certain
realities of African-American life.
Nevertheless, by its very nature, Heyward’s
Porgy was provocative, and some naturally
considered it an evocation, or an invocation, of
racial fears and fantasies, perceiving its
caricatures and stereotypes offensive and
affronting.

In general, contemporary reviews from the

national press were lavish in their praise:
Langston Hughes, a black poet and writer who
was one of the foremost interpreters to the
world of the black experience, called Heyward
one who saw, “with his white eyes, wonderful,
poetic qualities in the inhabitants of Catfish Row
that makes them come alive…”; the Baltimore
Sun noted that “With Porgy Heyward took the
first rank. The humble crippled Negro (sic)
beggar was a figure made utterly real to
Heyward’s readers . . . ‘Porgy’ . . . is, in the most
satisfying way, a . . . story written with a skill -
no, mastery - that give the reader a sense of
fullness, richness, and life”; the New York
Evening Post called Porgy “a series of
throbbing moments, a ghost of Africa stalking
on American soil,”; the Pulitzer Prize-winning
American novelist, Ellen Glasgow, noted it was
“born a classic. Nothing finer has occurred in
American literature since Uncle Remus.”; the
Nation found it “a fresh and finished picture of
the simple Southern Negro. And because he

Porgy and Bess Page 19

writes with poetry and penetration his story is
a moving one; because he writes with
detachment and tenderness . . . a fusion of
comedy and tragedy is delicately achieved.”

When Heyward died in 1940. The New York

Times hailed him as the foremost chronicler
of the “strange, various, primitive and
passionate world” of the Negro.

H

eyward was inspired to the Porgy story by

a newspaper crime report (in either 1918

or 1923, depending on the source) about a
murder of passion committed by a maimed and
crippled black man, a well-known local
character called “Goat Cart Sam,” or “Goat
Sammy,” a man who could not stand upright,
and was forced to travel around in a goat-drawn
cart.

Heyward took literary license in his

transformation of “Goat Cart Sam” into his
central character, Porgy. The real Sam
apparently bore little resemblance to
Heyward’s saintly Porgy: the real Sam is reputed
to have been a drunk and a gambler; there was
no Bess in his life but he was known to have
had plenty of girlfriends who he was always
beating with his goat whip; and children were
so scared of him that they anointed him the
“bad” man.

Heyward’s was a literary master: his Porgy

novel is saturated with colorful, provocative
prose. He opens with a profoundly romantic
portrait of Catfish Row:

...not a row at all, but a great brick

structure that lifted its three stories about the
three sides of a court. The fourth side was
partly closed by a high wall, surmounted by
jagged edges of broken glass set firmly in old
lime plaster, and pierced in its center by a
wide entrance-way. Over the entrance there
still remained a massive grill of Italian

Porgy and Bess Page 20

wrought iron, and a battered capital of marble
surmounted each of the lofty gate-posts. The
court itself was paved with large flag-stones,
which even beneath the accumulated grime
of a century, glimmered with faint and varying
shades in the sunlight.

And of Charleston, a city bordering on

decadence and ruin:

Porgy lived in the Golden Age. Not the

Golden Age of a remote and legendary past;
nor yet the chimerical era treasured by every
man past middle life, that never existed except
in the heart of youth; but an age when men,
not yet old, were boys in an ancient, beautiful
city that time had forgotten before it destroyed.

And of Sportin’ Life, the vain and deceitful

trickster, the dangerous and destructive force
to the Catfish Row social order who invokes
all of his evil to seduce Bess:

Sportin’ Life lifted his elegant trousers, so

that the knees would not bag, and squatted
on the flags at [Bess’s] side. He removed his
stiff straw hat, with its bright band, and spun
it between his hands. The moonlight was full
upon his face, with its sinister, sensuous
smile....He poured a little pile of white powder
into [her hand]. There it lay in the moonlight,
very clean and white on her dark skin.
“Happy dus!” she said, and her voice was like
a gasp.

Crown is the monstrous villain whose

killing rage threatens the stability of the Catfish
Row community. Crown is described as a man
possessing overwhelming physical power, and
capable of brutal savagery: his aggression
mesmerizes the Catfish Row residents to
incomprehensible fear. Heyward describes
Crown’s brutal murder of Robbins:

Porgy and Bess Page 21

With a low snarl, straight from his crouching

position, Crown hurled his tremendous weight
forward, shattering the lamp, and bowling
Robbins against the wall . . . The oil from the
broken lamp . . . blazed up ruddily. Crown was
crouched for a second spring, with lips drawn
from gleaming teeth. The light fell strong upon
thrusting jaw, and threw the sloping brow into
shadow. One hand touched the ground lightly,
balancing the massive torso. The other arm
held the cotton-hook forward, ready, like a
prehensile claw . . . A heady, bestial stench
absorbed all other odors. A fringe of shadowy
watchers crept from cavernous doorways,
sensed it [the scent], and commenced to wail
eerily.

The women of Catfish Row are either the

stereotypical mammy type, like the devout
Serena Robbins, whose husband boasted “Dat
lady ob mine is a born white-folks nigger,” or
the imposing Maria, who puts the fear of god
into Sportin’ Life, or they are prostitutes like
the ill-fated Bess.

When Bess first appears, she is drunk. Maria

serves her food and comments that her eyes
have “the acid of utter degradation.” Bess is
dissolute, and initially tries to play Porgy for
“the good money he gits fum the w’ite folks”:
it is later that Porgy’s love tames the wild beast
lurking in her soul. Nevertheless, Bess cannot
resist the lure of Sportin Life’s “happy dus,” or
Crown’s “hot hands.” Heyward’s description of
their meeting on Kittiwah Island leaves no doubt
that Bess, as well as Crown, are creatures of
instinct rather than of reason. Crown says “I
know yuh ain’t change. With yuh an’ me it always
goin’ tuh be de same. See?” And then he grabs
her body with such force that her breath is forced
from her.

Heyward portrays Catfish Row as a strong,

bonded community: the spirituals sung at
Robbins’s funeral have an almost familial
earnestness, and the resident’s virtual silence

Porgy and Bess Page 22

to the questioning of the racist police officers
represents a form of communal resistance, but
also a perceptive awareness of their unfortunate
status.

The real threats to the Catfish community

were the terrifying hurricane that devastated the
“Mosquito Fleet” of fishermen, an actual
historical event, and the community’s villainous
characters: the trickster Sportin” Life, and the
murderer, Crown. Those threats are neutralized
by the “mammie” figures of Serena and Maria
who unite against Sportin’ Life, as well as of
Porgy himself, whose seeming weakness
transforms into incredible strength: the crippled
man lies in wait for Crown, exploits every iota
of his energy, overpowers him, and destroys the
threat.

A

fter Dorothy Kuhns married DuBose

Heyward in 1923, she persuaded him

to abandon his insurance business and devote
his full-time to writing. At the time, she had
become a celebrated playwright in her own right,
and later adapted his novels for the Broadway
stage: Porgy in 1927, and Mamba’s Daughters
in 1929. Al Jolson approached Heyward to buy
the rights to Porgy for a musical in which he
would play the lead in blackface, but Heyward
rejected his proposal.

The idea of writing a full-length opera based

on Heyward’s Porgy first occurred to Gershwin
when he read the book in 1926. In 1933, after
many years of contemplation and
correspondence, Heyward and the Gershwin
brothers finally contracted to collaborate and
transform Porgy into an opera: the libretto
would be written by Heyward and Ira Gershwin,
and the lyrics by Ira and George Gershwin.
Heyward himself later contributed the lyrics for
Summertime and My Man’s Gone Now.

Gershwin vowed to be thoroughly

meticulous and faithful to Heyward’s story. In
preparation for his new challenge, he spent a

Porgy and Bess Page 23

summer absorbing the local atmosphere near
Charleston where he observed residents who
would become the prototypes for his Catfish
Row residents. Ultimately, Porgy and Bess
became the composer’s most ambitious work,
its score containing 700 pages of recitatives and
orchestration. According to David Ewen,
Gershwin’s first biographer, Gershwin adored
the work and it possessed him: he “never quite
ceased to wonder at the miracle that he had been
its composer. He never stopped loving each and
every bar, never wavered in the conviction that
he had produced a work of art.”

By early 1935 the composition of Porgy

and Bess was completed. In order to assure
more performances, Gershwin chose to have
the work performed at the Alvin Theater on
Broadway rather than as a full operatic
production. Porgy and Bess opened in New
York in September 1935, its premiere
supposedly disappointing yet its initial run
included 124 performances. Nevertheless, its
Broadway run, together with a subsequent tour,
failed to earn enough to recoup the original
financial investment. In spite of Gershwin’s
vaunted record of previous successes, his last
and most ambitious work for the stage was
financially unsuccessful.

By and large, the African-American

community, then and now, has steadfastly
refused to embrace Porgy and Bess,
traditionally staying away from it in droves, and
considering it a tasteless image of African-
American life. Duke Ellington despised the
opera version, and condemned Gershwin as a
plagiarizer of African-American music. The
renowned music critic, Virgil Thomson,
concurred, noting that it was a “libretto that
never should have been accepted on a subject
that never should have been chosen [by] a man
who should never have attempted it . . . Folk-
lore subjects recounted by an outsider are only
valid as long as the folk in question is unable to
speak for itself, which is certainly not true of

Porgy and Bess Page 24

the Negro in 1935.”

Other critics questioned Gershwin’s

credentials and technical ability to compose a
full-fledged opera. But more importantly, just
like the agitated condemnation of Heyward’s
novel ten years earlier, the opera was rejected
for its portrayal of African-American hardships
long after slavery and emancipation, its racial
stereotyping, and in its characterizations, the
irresponsible lifestyles, and the predisposition
for violence: Porgy and Bess was viewed in
some quarters as yet another hindrance to the
quest of black Americans for social respect.

Ironically, in the story’s transformation into

an opera, controversies over segregation
prevented it from coming to the city that
inspired it until the Charleston Tricentennial
festivities in 1970. MGM made a film of the
opera in 1959, but it was a total failure even
with its all-star cast that included Pearl Bailey,
Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, Sammy
Davis Jr., and a young Diahann Carroll, all of
whom had deep feelings of ambivalence over
the film. Contributing to the film’s failure,
controversies over segregated seating in the
South prompted an exasperated Goldwyn to
cancel all Southern engagements.

Perhaps the keenest of the ironies

surrounding Heyward’s Porgy and its later
incarnation into an opera is the fact that it has
given employment and opportunity to so many
blacks in the entertainment field, although in
its 1927 stage adaptation, periodic revolts from
cast members was the rule rather than the
exception.

Nevertheless, Porgy and Bess has become

synonymous with Charleston, and today, its
tourist-minded city fathers have exploited it
with nightspots that have become legendary:
tourists clamor to see Catfish Row, even though
it is fictional and nonexistent. Meanwhile, in
Vienna, the old Jugenstil bar of the
“Fledermaus” night club has been renamed
Porgy & Bess, now a center for jazz outside of

Porgy and Bess Page 25

the mainstream, and there is a Porgy en Bess jazz
bar in Amsterdam

Most of Porgy’s songs achieved immediate

popularity, but the work earned its real approval
and favor only after the 1940 Theater Guild
presentation of a slightly revised version. For
years it was performed more frequently in
Europe than in America where it was considered
a true American opera. More recently, Porgy
and Bess received its first uncut production in
Houston in 1976 to great acclaim, and its first
production at the Metropolitan Opera took
place in the 1980s.

I

ra Gershwin once described his brother’s

imagination as “the reservoir

of musical inventiveness, resourcefulness, and
craftsmanship”: George Gershwin continually
dipped into that “reservoir,” and the result
became a prodigious flow of musical
inventiveness and inspiration.

Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess bears a unique

companionship with the Jerome Kern-Oscar
Hammerstein Broadway phenomenon, Show
Boat (1927): together, they represent an integral
part of the history of modern musical theater.
Show Boat, adapted from the Edna Ferber novel,
was innovative, fresh, and daring: it portrayed
themes of racism, marital strife, and
psychological destruction. Its songs and music
evolve magnificently from character and plot,
and the entire musical revolves around the
metaphor of the Mississippi River: the river
stands for time and possesses the power to heal
the characters’ wounds.

As a music drama, Porgy and Bess contains

sweep and power. Its music is infused with
remarkable melodic variety: some of its songs
have become engraved into our collective
memories; the lullaby Summertime, Serena’s
lament My man’s gone now, Porgy’s I got
plenty o’ nuttin, and the love duet Bess, you is

Porgy and Bess Page 26

my woman. And if tension and conflict define
the essence of dramatic opera, Gershwin
provides music drama in the battle between
Crown and Robbins, their savage fight
underscored by a portentous fugue. These
musical creations stand alone in their sheer
beauty, but make a more profound impact when
heard in their full dramatic context on the opera
stage.

Gershwin identifies the Catfish Row

community with a rich musical portrait: there
are no plagiarized “spirituals,” but rather,
original creations that seem authentic: the
lyrical exaltation of Leavin the Promised Land,
the consolation of Clara, Clara, the stark
desolation of Gone, gone, gone, and the prayer
Oh, Doctor Jesus.

In the Kittiwah Island scene, the amoral

Sportin’ Life sermonizes the community who
have been softened up by a day of aimless
carousing: they join him as he mocks bible
teaching with cynicism, all sung in a gospel-
like interplay that is deeply imbedded with a
traditional blues musical vocabulary, It ain’t
necessarily so.

Catfish Row’s uninhibited social mores and

values are glimpsed in the opening ragtime of
the Jazzbo Brown scene, the fisherman Jake’s
bemused commentary on femininity, A woman
is a sometime thing, and the seemingly barbaric
episode complete with vocal outbursts and
tom-tom rhythms during the Kittiwah Island
picnic: I ain’ got no shame.

Finally, Gershwin tapped his reservoir of

genius in the dramatic passages in the Bess-
Crown confrontation on Kittiwah Island. Bess,
on the edge of desperation, pleads with Crown
to take another lover and allow her to return to
Porgy. Bess, wanton, dissolute, and lacking a
true moral compass, stands in conflict: she
cannot resolve her love for the upright Porgy
with her lust for the formidable Crown: a subtle
friction of reason and emotion. And when

Porgy and Bess Page 27

Bess’s good intentions collapse, her defeat is
expressed in her confession, the opera’s most
anguished music: What you want wid Bess?

P

orgy and Bess has been haunted from

its very beginnings by critics

and public alike who have been searching to
provide the work with a musical theater
pedigree: it is a continuing argument that has
made the work contentious and controversial;

Is Porgy and Bess an opera?
Is Porgy and Bess a Broadway musical?
From the very beginning, Gershwin himself

fed the controversy and invited the hounds.
During its composition, a news release from
Charleston reported that Gershwin had labeled
his new Porgy and Bess a “folk opera,” and
promised that if the opera turned out as he
hoped, it would “resemble a combination of the
drama and romance of Carmen, and the beauty
of Meistersinger, if you can imagine that.”

The word opera has its etymological roots

in Latin: it designates an art form that
incorporates words and music to drive its story.
Opera is a “sung play”: it can be dramatic when
it contains conflict and tension, or when it is
comic or lighter in theme; it is opera buffa,
comic opera, operetta, or musical comedy.
When words and music are presented without a
story continuity, they are generally considered
“revues” or “vaudeville.”

“Serious” opera, in its ultimate

manifestation has become idealized as “music
drama,” implying a perfect integration and
organic unity of text and music. The composer
of opera, or “music drama,” through his music,
becomes the “dramatist” and “narrator” of the
story, similar to the role of the cinema director
with his camera, or the choreographer in ballet;
composer, movie director, and choreographer
are all the dramatists of their story.

Porgy and Bess is opera: it is indeed a fully

sung play whose structure incorporates opera’s
inherent techniques such as song, or arias, duets

Porgy and Bess Page 28

and ensembles, sung recitatives that provide
action and link its songs, and leitmotif themes
that provide reminiscence, or identify ideas or
characters. In Porgy and Bess, the lullaby,
Summertime, appears almost as a leitmotif that
ironically seems to presage violence: it appears
during the crap game that ends with Crown
killing Jake Robbins; during the hurricane that
ends with the deaths of the baby’s father and
mother “with Daddy an’ Mammy standin’ by,”;
and by Bess when she sings to the orphaned baby
just before Porgy kills Crown.

“Folk,” by definition, refers to a specific

group of people within a culture, society, or
region. Gershwin originally called Porgy and
Bess a “folk opera,” but later, after much
criticism and reaction, he carefully avoided that
designation. Nevertheless, he had invoked the
“folk” label amid the Great Depression, years
when there arose a growing social awareness
and consciousness of different cultures within
the great American “melting pot,” and the
economically disadvantaged were recognized:
Porgy and Bess was composed during the
1930s when American social experiments were
beginning.

Gershwin, the creator of a “folk” work,

placed himself in the line of fire: he was
vulnerable, and was even deemed presumptuous.
The creative team was questioned and their
credentials were doubted: this was a story about
underprivileged southern blacks that was written
by a white novelist, and set to music by a New
York-based Jewish songwriter-lyricist team;
they were all considered “outsiders” who had
neither the right, insight, nor understanding to
bring this story to the public with authenticity.
Nevertheless, Gershwin intuitively understood
the African-American experience: he was
articulate in expressing their culture within the
framework of his musical vocabulary.
Ironically, Porgy contains no folk tunes, and
perhaps the only “folksiness” remains a few
street cries from the “honeyman,” “strawberry

Porgy and Bess Page 29

girl,” and residents of Catfish Row.

Is Porgy and Bess an opera or a musical? It

did premiere on Broadway rather than at an
opera house, but that fact does not contribute
to determining its specific genre.

By 1935, Gershwin had become the

supreme master of the American popular song.
He composed during the “Golden Age” of
American popular songs, a specific style of song
that had begun in 1914 with Jerome Kern, Irving
Berlin, Harold Arlen, Cole Porter, and
flourished for some 50 years afterwards with
the music of Richard Rodgers, Leonard
Bernstein, and Frank Loesser.

The American popular song of that era

possessed a very special “musicality”: it had its
own unique character, powerful lyrics, and
poignant music that was always intimate,
sophisticated, and graceful in its expression of
emotion and sentiment. Generally, those early
20

th

century songs broke with the earlier

traditions of Stephen Foster and the extravagant
opera/operetta traditions inherited from
Europe. American songs did not seek climax in
vocal virtuosity: their musical lines usually
inhabited a one-octave range whereas the vocal
lines of opera and operetta generally would
reach two or more octaves to achieve emotional
climax. And with rare exceptions, American
songs always followed a 32-bar structure in
which tension is heightened when the main
theme is repeated after the bridge.

The American musical theater – the

“Broadway musical” - developed from its own
indigenous character and not from European
styles. There were revues and vaudevilles, but
as the Broadway musical developed from the
1880s to the 1920s, it used a diversity of its
own American elements, song styles, and
performing traditions: melodrama, minstrel,
Negro spiritual, ballad, ragtime, and jazz. Many
of them became worthy of the operatic stage,
like the Kern-Hammerstein Show Boat (1927),

Porgy and Bess Page 30

Broadway’s first attempt to tell a profound and
complex story with music that dramatized racial
inequalities on the American stage.

Gershwin was a master of that particular

American song style. His outpouring of songs
for Porgy and Bess contain what American
songs do best: they are fine melodies,
ingeniously harmonized, orchestrated with great
skill, and their strength lies in the dramatic
effectiveness of their direct communication of
emotion: all of Gershwin’s music is typically
American; it is indigenous music.

Porgy and Bess portrays a very human

drama: all of its characters are multi-
dimensional and convey a profound depth of
feeling. Whether Porgy and Bess is “sung
drama,” “opera,” or “Broadway musical,” it is,
nevertheless, a sensitive story about human lives
with its music adding that special emotive power
to its text.

Words have the power to stimulate thought:

music has the power to make one feel. Porgy
and Bess, a music drama, or drama with music,
portrays the conflicts and tensions of in the
human drama for survival. Gershwin portrays
this heartfelt drama with musical radiance:
Porgy is American, an earthy drama which glows
with the rich colors of American life. And, the
score contains that special Gershwin trademark
of “singable” and “hummable” melodies:
American music that appeals strongly to the
“man in the street,” composed in that very
specific American musical idiom.

Gershwin’s entire music career was marked

by a substantial stake in African-American
music: Porgy became his destiny: his ultimate
musical vision. He devoted the better part of
two years to this single work, the fulfillment
of which was his own idea. In the end, it became
his magnum opus, the work he was aspiring to,
and yearning to create throughout his entire
career.

Folk opera? Opera? Broadway musical?
Porgy and Bess represents great American

Porgy and Bess Page 31

musical theater: it is a drama about human
suffering, about hope and aspirations, the
yearning for love, and the fulfillment of love.
The underlying conflicts and tensions within its
story represent the struggles of all humanity,
irrespective of race, culture, or ethnicity.
Gershwin, the dramatist of this story, narrates
its poignancy through the emotive power of his
wondrous musical inventions.

Porgy and Bess Page 32