Porgy&Bess — Page 2

i have been saving my bucks for a Porgy album- after watching BW- the american musical i became VERY interested. plus- i think Gershwin is a master

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An excellent alternative version is

"The Complete Jazz Opera" of PORGY & BESS.

Mel Torme as Porgy
Francis Faye as Bess
Russ Garcia conducting the Bethlehem Orchestra
The Stan Levey Group
The Australian Jazz Quartet
Duke Ellington & his Orchestra

This was originally issued in 1956, and was digitally remastered and issued on CD.

This is the complete opera in jazz. Well worth finding.

I somehow miss Margo's post in the beginning of this thread. Contrary to what she (and Sondheim) may say, Porgy & Bess in its definitive and intended form is an opera, not a musical or an opera-musical hybrid. Here are a few things Gershwin himself had to say about the work:

"If I am successful it will resemble a combination of the drama and romance of Carmen and the beauty of Meistersinger."

I am very familiar with both Carmen and Meistersinger. Like Carmen, Porgy and Bess has beautiful songs that are an integral part of its musical makeup. The comparisons to Meistersinger are even stronger. The large choral ensembles and dramatic scenes, the effective use of leitmotifs, the Wagnerian scope and difficulty of its principal roles, and the fight-scene fugue owe much to Wagner's work. Above all, however, there is a similar feeling of community that links Catfish Row with Nuremburg. Clearly Porgy and Bess was influenced and modeled after these two great operatic works.

Here's what Gershwin had to say about the songs in the work:

"It is true that I have written songs for Porgy and Bess. I am not ashamed of writing songs at any time so long as they are good songs. In Porgy and Bess I realized that I was writing an opera for the theater and without songs it could be neither of the theater nor entertaining from my viewpoint.” He further went on to say, “But the songs are entirely within the operatic tradition. Many of the most successful operas of the past have had songs. Nearly all of Verdi’s operas contain what are known as ‘song hits’. Carmen is almost a collection of song hits. Of course, the songs in Porgy and Bess are only a part of the whole…I have used symphonic music to unify entire scenes.”

There you have it…from the mouth of the composer – he intended Porgy to performed as composed - as an opera, and it is a grand opera, not a musical, operetta, or hybrid.

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On a slightly different note, IMO, anyone who loves "Porgy and Bess" and Jazz will absolutely be blown away by the Miles Davis/Gil Evans landmark recording of the score.


Miles Davis/Gil Evans -

jam - I have been hoping for exactly that for years! I was at the Bowl performance, and I kept wondering why someone wasn't planning it right then and there.

Heh. I wrote a monster research paper last semester on Porgy. I argued that it is definitively an opera (when performed in its original form- many productions convert some or all of the recitatives into spoken dialogue) but my principal topic of concern was whether it can be considered a legitimate expression of black culture rather than a minstrel show (I argued that it is legitimate, mostly working to refute a 1984 journal article by Lawrence Starr, published in "American Music"). Though its individual arias are deservedly popular, their popularity in jazz and pop versions has, I think, made people forget how brilliant the entire work is. Its connections to other operas are sometimes very explicit- the passage after Crown's death is borrowed almost exactly from Berg's Wozzeck, and some orchestrations distincly recall Debussy.

As for recordings, my favorite is the Glyndebourne Festival recording with Simon Rattle conducting, though the Houston Opera recording is also very fine (this production was, interestingly enough, directed by Jack O'Brien). The DVD of the Glyndebourne production, directed by Trevor Nunn, is also excellent. I'm thinking of making the pilgrimage to DC to see Porgy this fall at the Washington National Opera. Anyone?

I'm sorry I'm so far down into this post, I just got back from Europe.

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