LONDON: The Cape Town Opera will charm London with their wonderful production of George Gershwins opera Porgy and Bess. we enjoyed it some years ago in Oslo, where also the first Bess, Anne Brown, who then still was alive was present among the audience. It was a great experience. Energetic. Musicality of first class. Touching.

The Gershwins’  Porgy And Bess

George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward and Ira Gershwin

London Stage Premiere of Cape Town Opera’s production
Performed by Cape Town Opera
Presented by Askonas Holt and Raymond Gubbay
About the production

To mark 75 years since George Gershwin’s tragically early death, Cape Town Opera performs this exuberantly colourful staging of the great American songwriter’s immortal ‘folk opera’ Porgy and Bess.

A jazzy fusion of classical opera and Broadway musical, boasting some of the most unforgettable melodies in the song repertoire – including ‘Summertime’ and ‘It Ain’t Necessarily So’ – Porgy and Bess is not only America’s greatest opera but the only opera fully to embrace the African-American experience.

Originally set among the teeming black community of Catfish Row, a run-down tenement in 1920s South Carolina, the opera tells of the crippled beggar Porgy’s desperate attempts to rescue the beautiful Bess from her twin dependency upon her violent lover Crown and the sleazy dope-dealer Sportin’ Life.

Created to celebrate Cape Town Opera’s 10th anniversary in 2009, this vibrantly physical production brilliantly highlights the work’s universal and enduring message by shifting the action to apartheid-era Soweto.


Performances

July 11, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 at 7.30pm
July 12, 14, 19, 21 at 2.30pm
14 performances. Running time: 2hrs 45mins

Cape Town Opera, known globally for its exceptionally gifted young singers, comes to the London Coliseum this July with a critically acclaimed short season of Porgy & Bess
Porgy and Bess is one of the great icons of American music theatre, known around the world as ‘the peoples’ opera’. Written in 1935 and originally portraying the 1920s life of America’s Deep South, this compelling work contains some of the most stirring and ever-lasting songs including Summertime, I got plenty of nuttin’, It ain’t necessarily so and I loves you Porgy.For this production, Cape Town Opera has re-imagined the fictional waterfront community of Catfish Row, South Carolina, moving it to a township in Soweto; however the Gershwins’ unforgettable score remains at the heart of this iconic masterpiece. The heartbreaking story features some of the most beloved works from the Great American Songbook.George Gershwin’s inventive arrangements are a “hybrid” of musical influences, as Porgy and Bess defies definition moving from opera to musical and back again to reveal Gershwin’s New York Jazz roots but also a fine mix of blues, praying songs, street cries, spirituals all blended with arias.