THE NEW ZEALAND OPERA SOCIETY

Porgy and Bess, George and Ira Gershwin’s operatic masterpiece returns to New Zealand direct from New York. Garth Wilshere recounts some of the work's colourful history.

George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is the great “American Opera”, sometimes referred to as a ”Folk” opera in an to attempt to distinguish it from “Grand” opera, but it stands as a strong and immensely powerful musical and dramatic statement and has maintained it’s huge popularity through the years since it was written in the 1930’s.

The world premiere in Boston’s Colonial Theatre on 30 September 1935 was followed by performances in New York’s Alvin Theatre from 10 October that same year. It ran for 124 performances, but had a mixed critical response.

George Gershwin always had total faith in his work and he was proved absolutely correct: Porgy and Bess can now take its place alongside other works in the “Great” operatic repertoire.

DuBose Heyward’s book and Ira Gershwin’s lyrics based on Heyward’s book Porgy, which had fascinated George when he discovered it in 1926, proved as irresistible to him as the opera has proved to many music lovers ever since.

Part of the magic,  of the creation of this work,  is how George,  a sophisticated young man from New York could capture so well in his music the spirit and innocent nobility of a simple, honest and trusting African-American man such as Porgy, living in difficult circumstances and relative poverty.

The result is a magnificent musical work with glorious and touching melodies, many of them now standards, and truthful political statements on life.
As the Gershwin’s estate rightly only allow performances by an African-American cast,  opportunities to experience this work live on stage occur infrequently so a chance to see it should not be missed.

Here in New Zealand a special dispensation allowed the wonderfully memorable, and much loved production in 1965 notable for the towering performance of Inia Te Wiata and other equally fine performers. The same production then toured Australia. Te Wiata was so oustanding he was later asked to perform the role of Porgy in Israel.

And in the late 1980’s again with special permission a production was mounted by the Mercury Theatre in Auckland with Maori and Pacific Island stars including George Henare and the late Iosefa Enari.

This is the second time that this very successful New York production has toured here. The production has a large cast with most of the roles, including the main characters, being multi-cast. The director is Will Roberson, stage direction is by Susan Williams-Finch and the conductor is Stefan Kozinski.