The Present Reflects the Past

PORGY AND BESS THE RESENT REFLECTS THE ASTP P PERSPECTIVES

By Alina MacNichol

Director of Civic Engagement Porgy and Bess is an American opera about black life in the south, created by white artists at the height of Jim Crow. It has been surrounded by controversy since its premier, but it tells a universal story whose themes of race and community identity continue to resonate with audiences today. The story touches on many social injustices and societal crises: racism; discrimination by class and by gender; drug abuse; prejudice against the disabled; domestic violence; and poverty. Mark Clague, professor of musicology at the University of Michigan, says that Porgy and Bess should be antiquated, but it’s not. Its dramatic momentum comes from interpersonal conflict in the context of the impossibility of justice.”

The opera’s history highlights the bias against black performers that was (and still is) a part of American society. In 1930, composer George Gershwin and his lyricist brother, Ira, were commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera to create a distinctly American opera based on the novel “Porgy” written by DuBose Heyward. But the Met required a white cast performing in blackface, so in 1935 the Gershwins and Heyward assembled an all-black cast for Porgy and Bess and took it to Broadway.

It took many years for the show to be performed again in its full version, as an opera, and in the last 80 years it has become one of the best-known operas. Many of its arias have become popular classics that are regularly performed off the opera stage, by artists from many musical disciplines: “Summertime”; “It Ain’t Necessarily So”; “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin”; and “My Man’s Gone Now”. It has also been adapted for radio, film and television. The Gershwin family has maintained a contractual requirement that in staged productions, all black characters in the cast and chorus must be performed by black singers. Thus, despite the stereotypes that it projects and its appropriative portrayal of a black community, Porgy and Bess has been a showcase for black operatic talent. It also celebrates the resilience and strength of purpose of the black community, even when faced with crippling bigotry. The community of Catfish Row nurtures and sustains its people, who look out for each other because nobody else will look out for them. The actions of its main characters often transcend the stereotypes that are imposed on them.

In the 1930s, Porgy and Bess was hailed as the first portrayal of blacks that avoided the caricatures that were common at that time, while also being criticized for its appropriation of black culture. We continue to struggle with stereotypes and bigotry, race and representation in opera and in our society. Porgy and Bess creates a window into the past and, at the same time, a reflection of present day race relations in America.