“Porgy and Bess” will be performed at the Lucerne Festival with a cast made up exclusively of black singers. George Gershwin himself wanted it that way.
Elizabeth Llewellyn sings Bess in the Lucerne production of Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”.
Almost everyone knows them, the legendary songs “Summertime”, “I Love You, Porgy” or “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin'”. They are all from George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess”. But do we also remember what this opera is about? A love story, of course. An unfortunate one too. One set in the black settlement of Catfish Row in Charleston circa 1870. Porgy, a crippled beggar, loves the slut Bess. But she is attracted to Crown, a brutal gang leader. Only after he stabbed the fisherman Robbins can Porgy persuade Bess to flee together. But Bess falls for the violent Crown again, whereupon the jealous Porgy kills the gang leader. However, the deed does not bring him to his destination: Bess lets himself be towed away by the drug dealer Sportin’ Life and flees with him to New York.
Gershwin composed this wild story between 1933 and 1935. The libretto was written by DuBose Heyward, who drew on his own novel “Porgy” and on its stage adaptation created by his wife Dorothy. Ira Gershwin, the composer’s brother, also contributed some of the lyrics. The opera premiered in 1935 at the Alvin Theater in New York.
Clever heirs
The concert performance in Lucerne on August 25 features an impressive cast: Porgy is played by the American bass Morris Robinson, and Bess is the English soprano Elizabeth Llewellyn, whose parents are from Jamaica. And the South African Golda Schultz, “artiste étoile” at the festival, can be seen in the role of Clara. The fact that the entire cast of singers consists of blacks is not primarily due to the sympathies of the conductor Alan Gilbert, but rather has to do with the performance rights for the piece.
Following a wish from Gershwin, “Porgy and Bess” may only be sung by black people when it is played on stage. Since Gershwin died in 1937, copyrights in Europe would actually have expired after 70 years. But the cleverness of the Gershwin heirs is that they claim Ira Gershwin, who lived until 1983, as an equal author. The work must therefore be announced by the licensees with the unwieldy name “The Gershwins’ ‘Porgy and Bess’ by George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin”. Thanks to this tricky edition, the work will remain protected until 2053 – and the specification for its performance is binding.
«Racist censorship»
However, there have been repeated attempts to circumvent the rights holder’s requirement. In 2019, the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest hit the headlines for performing “Porgy and Bess” with white singers. In order to improve their own chances in a possible legal dispute, Szilveszter Ókovács, the director appointed by the Orbán government, asked the participants to identify themselves in writing as “African Americans”. Ókovács explained the request in a television interview with the words: “In Hungary there is no skin color register.” The performance turns against “racist censorship”.
However, Gershwin’s desire to have only black people appear in the work also has a substantive justification. “Porgy and Bess” is not about white oppression of blacks, but the opera’s plot is set in a slave trade center in South Carolina after the end of the American Civil War. Even in the 1930s, the issue of racial discrimination was omnipresent in the United States.
For Gershwin, a white man who grew up in New York as the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, to compose an opera for African Americans in a southern US state was a brave decision at the time. For the New York opera audience, which consisted mainly of white people, the piece must have been a real provocation. Half a century passed before “Porgy and Bess” was first shown at the Metropolitan Opera, the leading opera house in the USA.