Gershwin Porgy and Bess

Porgy and Bess mirrors the French operas by Ravel and Debussy, which Cecilia Bartoli has been programming at the Opéra since the beginning of her tenure. George Gershwin’s admiration for the former, for instance, is clearly audible in his piano concertos, whereas Ravel was famously impressed by Gershwin‘s compositions, and beyond that excited about American popular music, brought to France in the 1920s by the likes of Josephine Baker. 

Songlike numbers such as “Summertime”, jazzy rhythms, traditional Black American tunes and even street cries, which Gershwin heard during a study period in Charleston, determine his only opera’s sound. But its descriptiveness, the imaginative orchestration, the powerful choruses and dramatic solo parts are direct descendents of Europe’s impressionist and verismo movements. 

At the centre stands an impossible love between the crippled beggar Porgy and the beautiful Bess, whose longing for a better life makes her an easy victim of a former lover's violence, and of “happy dust”, pressed upon her by a devilish drugdealer.