An American Odyssey: ‘Porgy and Bess’ Through the Years

The epic opera first stretched its legs seventy-six years ago at a tryout in Boston, with the largest all-black cast seen on an American stage. After its premiere at Boston’s Colonial Theatre on September 30, 1935, George Gershwin received a fifteen-minute ovation. The presidents of MIT, Wellesley, and Harvard leapt to their feet to applaud, and tickets for the week-long run were impossible to obtain. Historian Robert Rushmore remarked, “To the eternal credit of the city of Boston, the audience and critics were not confused by this strange new kind of folk opera and recognized its greatness.” After this trial run, Porgy and Bess moved to the Great White Way—Broadway. The official premiere came on October 10, 1935, at the Alvin Theatre in New York. Rouben Mamoulian, who would later go on to direct the films Blood and Sand and The Mask of Zorro, directed the production. Opera singers Todd Duncan and Anne Brown performed the title roles, and comedian John W. Bubbles took on the role of Sportin’ Life. As he could not read music, he compensated by learning the complex rhythm through tap dancing.

Despite reviews from Boston that hailed Porgy and Bess as having reached “the ultimate in theatrical production,” the New York critics sat on the fence, neither approving nor dismissing. The mixed reception forced the show to close after a disappointing 124 performances. The Gershwins, writer DuBose Heyward, and their backers lost their financial investments.

When the national tour took off in 1936, Porgy and Bess ignited social change. After stops in Philadelphia, Chicago, and Pittsburgh, the opera was scheduled to finish at Washington D.C.’s National Theatre. Anne Brown recalled, “As expected we were told that the National Theatre would be a segregated house. Todd and I refused to perform and were threatened by the Theatre Guild who said we had to sing or there would be reprisals. We cared less. We were adamant.” The theater relented. Whites and blacks sat side-by-side for the first time in the theater’s history.

Despite the success of the tour, directors, scared by the disappointing box office receipts of the Broadway premiere, hesitated to restage Porgy and Bess. Finally, producer and director Cheryl Crawford opened a streamlined Broadway revival of the opera in 1942. She cut minor characters, turned the recitatives into spoken dialogue, and reduced the orchestra to half its size. The result was a musical theater version, and ticket sales reflected the audience’s approval. The production ran for 286 performances (at the time a record for a Broadway revival), left on an eighteen-month tour across the country, and returned to New York for a two-week, sold-out run.

As affection for Porgy and Bess boomed in America, the opera made its way across the Atlantic. On March 23, 1943, the Danish Royal Opera premiered the work in Copenhagen with an all-white cast in blackface to enthusiastic audiences. Despite its success, the Nazis tried to close the production. The theater refused, and for twenty-one sold-out performances, police surrounded the building. When the Nazis threatened to bomb the theater, managers ended the run.

After the Second World War, Porgy and Bess found its way back to Europe under the guidance of Robert Breen and Blevins Davis. With financing from the U.S. Department of State, Breen and Davis restored several songs cut from previous productions. The production boasted an allstar cast with Leontyne Price as Bess and William Warfield as Porgy. Cab Calloway took on Sportin’ Life, a part written with him in mind, and a young Maya Angelou stepped in as a featured dancer. In December 1955, Porgy and Bess navigated a jungle of Cold War hostility to travel to the Soviet Union. Audiences in Moscow adored the production, the first show performed by Americans since the Bolshevik Revolution.

With its sweeping success on the international stage, Porgy and Bess became a hot commodity in Hollywood. In 1959, renowned producer Samuel Goldwyn offered Sidney Poitier the role of Porgy. Offended by the portrayal of African-Americans in the script, Poitier turned it down. Goldwyn, however, exerted pressure on Poitier who ultimately accepted the role. With Poitier on board, Dorothy Dandridge agreed to play Bess, and Sammy Davis, Jr. lobbied hard to play Sportin’ Life. Diahann Carroll and Pearl Bailey took the roles of Clara and Maria. Despite a stellar cast, the film ran into trouble. Early in production, a suspicious fire destroyed the set. Director Rouben Mamoulian was fired as a result of artistic disagreements between him and Goldwyn. The popular Hollywood musicals of the day—such as Singing in the Rain, Brigadoon, and Kismet—favored a more happy-go-lucky tone. Mamoulian, by contrast, wanted the film of Porgy and Bess to reflect an authentic, historical Charleston. Goldwyn ultimately replaced him with director Otto Preminger. After the tumultuous filming process, critics lambasted the film’s set as overly lavish and the action as monotonous. When Goldwyn’s fifteen-year lease on the film rights expired, the Gershwin and Heyward estates blocked the movie from further distribution.

In 1976, the Houston Grand Opera assembled the first production of Porgy and Bess to use the score from before Gershwin made his first round of cuts after the opening in Boston. However, because union laws mandated overtime for a show that surpassed three hours, directors John DeMain and Jack O’Brien had to make edits. Snipping away reprises and short lines, they finished with a production that ran two hours and fifty-eight minutes. The show, the only opera to receive a Tony Award, was hailed in the New York Daily News as “the most musical, moving, and profoundly beautiful production playing in New York.”

As Porgy and Bess continues its odyssey and returns to Boston, it does so with a renewed energy in the present moment. Each restaging of Porgy and Bess carries the music of a nation, the history of a people, and the voice of an ever-changing America.

1935

Despite receiving glowing reviews in Boston, Gershwin and director Rouben Mamoulian knew that, at nearly four hours in length, cuts had to be made. Gershwin, Mamoulian, and vocal director Alexander Smallens walked around Boston Common until three in the morning, arguing over edits. Mamoulian and Smallens suggested three numbers be cut. Gershwin painfully agreed. Two days before the Broadway premiere, Gershwin presented Mamoulian with a birthday present: pages of the score tied with a red ribbon. The composer handed the gift to his director and said, “Thank you for making me take out all that stuff in Boston.”

The production opened on Broadway at the Alvin Theatre on October 10, 1935. Subsequently, the production toured to Philadelphia, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C. Todd Duncan, a longtime resident of Washington, D.C., knew that the National Theatre had long refused entry to non-white patrons. Upon learning that Duncan and his co-star Anne Brown refused to perform in a segregated playhouse, the manager of the National Theatre, S.E. Cochran, approached Duncan with a compromise: Wednesday and Saturday matinees could be opened to black audiences. Duncan said no. Cochran returned with a second offer: black patrons could sit in the second balcony at any performance. Duncan said no. Unless every seat be made available to any patron, regardless of the color of their skin, Todd Duncan and Anne Brown would not be satisfied. Finally, Cochran relented, and the National Theatre became de-segregated for the first time in its history.

1942

Cheryl Crawford directed the first attempt at transforming the opera into a musical theater work.

1943

Porgy and Bess became a symbol of resistance to Nazi occupation of Denmark; radio stations would play “It Ain’t Necessarily So” after Nazi broadcasts.

1952-1956

The show played in seventy cities in twenty-nine countries around the world. Truman Capote chronicled this government-sponsored production’s tour to the Soviet Union in The Muses are Heard.

1959

Staring Sidney Poitier, Dorothy Dandridge, and Sammy Davis, Jr.

1970

Porgy and Bess played for the first time in Charleston.

1976

This mostly uncut production of Porgy and Bess won a Tony Award for best revival of a musical as well as a Grammy for its recording.

1985

On the fiftieth anniversary of its premiere, the Met produced Porgy and Bess for the first time.

1986

Trevor Nunn directed an almost four-hour, uncut version of the opera, featuring the London Philharmonic Orchestra. The production was scenically expanded and filmed for television in 1993.

1995

This South African production was set in the 1970s in Cape Town, during apartheid.

2006

Trevor Nunn transforms his celebrated Glyndebourne production into a West End musical.

Jenna Clark Embrey is a second-year dramaturgy student at the A.R.T./MXAT Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard University.