Toward a Reevaluation of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess

Abstract

Nearly fifty years after its completion by Gershwin, and more than forty years after its composer's tragically early death, Porgy and Bess may finally be starting to come into its own. Until recently, this folk while famous throughout the world, was a paradoxically unknown work. Not until 1976 was there a complete recording available of the score as Gershwin wrote it or a stage presentation of the opera that was essentially complete and true to the composer's conception.' No wonder that in-depth critical literature on the work is still almost nonexistent.2 Hopefully, this will change as those surprised, stimulated, and moved by encountering the real Porgy and Bess assimilate their feelings and thoughts and begin to disseminate them. The distinguished critic Eric Salzman gave a wonderfully candid initiation to this process when he wrote in a review of the first complete recording of the opera, came across a line (by myself) in which I described Porgy as . . . 'a masterpiece of musical comedy.' Well, I really ought to have known better. Porgy ... is really a grand grand opera which has been consistently and awkwardly cut back to Broadway-musical proportions by the realities of American cultural life.3 With this article, I offer my own confession and modest contribution.4

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