PORGY & BESS
Opera in three acts by George Gershwin
Libretto by Ira Gershwin and Du Bose Heyward, after Dorothy and Du Bose Heyward's "Porgy"
First performed on 10 October 1935 in New York
CAST (in order of appearance)
Clara, Jake's wife
- Paula Ingram (sung by Harolyn Blackwell)
Mingo - Barrington Coleman
Sportin' Life, a dope peddler - Damon Evans
Jake, a fisherman - Gordon Hawkins (sung by Bruce Hubbard)
Serena, Robbins's wife - Cynthia Clarey
Robbins - D Alonzo Washington (sung by Johnny Worthy)
Peter, the honey man - Mervin Wallace
Lily, Peter's wife- Maureen Brathwaite
Maria, keeper of the cook-shop - Marietta Simpson
Porgy, a crippled beggar - Willard White
Crown, a stevedore, and Bess's lover- Gregg Baker
The Glyndebourne Chorus
The London Philharmonic conducted by SIMON RATTLE
Directed by Trevor Nunn
Filmed in London, November/December 1992
Sung in English
SYNOPSIS
Setting: Catfish Row, a negro neighbourhood in Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s
Porgy shows kindness to the beautiful but dissolute Bess when her lover, Crown, is forced to flee after killing Robbins in a drunken fight over a crap game. Porgy takes Bess in and falls in love with her, and she becomes his woman, protected by his care against community opprobrium and the advances of Sportin' Life, the local dope peddler. Urged by Porgy to join a picnic excursion to Kittiwah Island, Bess encounters Crown, who is hiding there. Despite her genuine love for Porgy, Crown overcomes her resistance, and after spending the night with him on the island, she returns to Catfish Row in a state of delirium. Porgy helps nurse her back to health and, though intuition tells him she has been with Crown, he reaffirms his love for her. A hurricane hits the coast while fishermen from Catfish Row are at sea. As the community prays for their safety, Crown reappears, mocks Porgy for being less than a man and then rushes out into the storm in the vain hope of saving the fishermen. Surviving this onslaught of nature, he steals back to Catfish Row the next night to reclaim Bess. The waiting Porgy kills him in a brief struggle. When the police finds Crown's body, they arrest Porgy as a witness. Freed a week later, he reappears triumphantly on Catfish Row, only to find that Bess, convinced by Sportin' Life that Porgy is gone for good, has sailed for New York in the dope peddler's company. The opera ends as Porgy leaves by goat cart to search for Bess.
