Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” At National Opera and Ballet Theater

The classical American opera “Porgy and Bess” by composer George Gershwin comes to the Albanian public in a special premier at the National Opera and Ballet Theater.
“Porgy and Bess”, an opera written by Gershwin in collaboration with DuBose and Gershwin’s brother Ira, is the one American opera to become fully established in the international opera repertoire as well as in the popular musical imagination. Its tunes have become standards for jazz improvisation.
“Porgy and Bess” is based on DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel Porgy and on the 1927 Broadway play of the same name by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward. Gershwin sketched the opera in 1934 and prepared the orchestra score after about one year of work.
The story is a simple one, set in Charleston, South Carolina, at the turn of the century in a small black enclave called Catfish Row. It tells about Porgy, a crippled beggar who travels about in a goat-drawn cart, and who falls in love with Bess, a woman of uncertain reputation who is under the domination of a stevedore named Crown. Crown kills a Catfish Row inhabitant in a craps game and flees. When he returns for Bess, he is killed in a fight with Porgy. Porgy goes to jail, and Bess is enticed to New York by a flashy gambler, Sportin’ Life. At the opera’s end, Porgy is heading to New York to search for her.
It has had a triumphant saga for a half century on stage, backstage, on film and around the world. It played Vienna’s Volksopera and Milan’s La Scala to adoring crowds. In World War II, the Danes performed it over the objections of their Nazi occupiers. In the postwar era, it became the first American theatrical venture to play in the Soviet Union.
“Porgy and Bess” will be on the Albanian stage for about one week, till October 22nd.