porgy and bess

     

Porgy an Bess is an opera, first performed in 1935, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Dorothy Heyward. It was based on DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy and the play of the same name that he co-wrote with his wife Dorothy. All three works deal with African American life in the fictitious Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina, in the early 1930s.

Trivia about porgy and bess

  • Robert Guilliaume appeared in a 1965 production of this Gershwin work at the Vienna Volksoper
  • 1935 folk opera that featured the song "Summertime"
  • In 1934 George Gershwin spent part of the "Summertime" in Charleston to prepare to write his score for this
  • A song from this opera says, "Summertime and the livin' is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high"
  • A buzzard flies overhead & inspires the cast of this Gershwin opera to sing "The Buzzard Song"
  • 1935 American opera whose final scene features the following
  • "The Muses Are Heard" is Truman's account of going to Moscow with the black cast of this Gershwin show
  • Opera lovers got plenty o' Gershwin when this work made its world premiere in Boston Sept. 30, 1935
  • "I got plenty o' nuttin'"--I'm not complaining, I'm quoting a song from this American opera
  • Crippled beggar Sammy Smalls, who traveled in a goat cart, inspired a title character of this opera set on Catfish Row