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MUSICAL THEATRE .
Porgy and Bess comes to town for opera performance
Gershwin’s American master
piece Porgy and Bess comes to Au
gusta for one performance only on
Saturday, March 13. Augusta
Opera is proud to present the In
ternational Touring Company
which has enjoyed rave reviews
and standing ovations from Japan
to London.
Peter Klein, the producer, ex
plains that “Of all the shows T have
toured in the past 26 years, this is
the one I still love to sit through
and discover new nuances in the
music. For me George Gershwin is
the Mozart of the 20th century.”
The bounty of hit songs from this
single Gershwin opus—“ Bess, You
is My Woman Now” ... “Summer
time” ... “It Ain’t Necessarily So” ...
“I Got Plenty of Nuttin™ ... “My
Man’s Gone Now” ... qualifies it as
the composer’s masterwork for the stage
and would make many other famous opera
composers jealous.
“You'll leave the production of Porgy and
Bess humming ... even singing the songs.
Although you may hear the music on CD a
thousand times, until you see the live stag
ing of this work you’ll never experience its
real power -- when the music complements
meaningful action.
Gershwin used Bizet’s Carmen and
Wagner’s Meistersinger as inspiration for
Porgy and Bess. The electrifying result
combines jazz and gospel in memorable solo,
duet and choral singing. Porgy and Bess is
considered a folk opera - offering fully ac
companied arias with spoken dialogue. One
of the assets of this work is the choral sing
ing. All of Catfish Row joins in the music,
and those choral moments move the action
ahead. Porgy and Bess is shown in two acts
with one intermission in just three hours.
The all-black cast of the International
Touring Company, which is accompanied by
a 20-piece orchestra, is drawn from the
world’s leading opera companies -- Houston
Grand Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Opera
Ebony, and Frankfurt Operas. As Elizabeth
Graham explains, who plays Bess and is a
& b
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Marich reprimands Sportin' Life with a cleaver.
Metropolitan Opera Audition winner, “com
posers George and Ira Gershwin ordered
that the opera be performed by an all Afro-
American cast ... (this) has given black
singers tremendous opportunities.” This
stipulation has led to some interesting re
sults, though, in foreign productions of Porgy
and Bess. Dispensation from the casting
requirements was given twice for a large
Maoriand Polynesian castsin New Zealand.
When the International Touring Company
performed in Japan, people in the street
would come innocently to touch the skin of
the performers.
Tickets are now on sale from Augusta
Opera for the March 13th 8 p.m. perfor
mance of Porgy and Bess at the Bell Audito
rium on 712 Telfair Street. Call Augusta
Opera at (706) 826-4710 or fax (706) 826-
4732 or drop by their offices in Sacred Heart
Cultural Center, 13th and Greene Streets
downtown.
The story in a nutshell
Gershwin’s 1935 opera was based on Porgy,
a novel and play by Dubose Heyward, a
Charleston native. The opera opens to the
strains of “Summertime.” Porgy, a cripple, is
a popular resident of Catfish Row in Charles-
Augusta
Focus is an
award
winning
Walker
Group
Publication
AUGUSTA FOCUS FEBRUARY 25, 1999
ton. Rollingaround onacart, hejoins
a crap game. The game gains mo
mentum as Crown, the local bully,
takes part. A fightignites, culminat
ingwith Crownkillingaman. Crown
flees,leavingbehind hiswoman, Bess,
who is shunned by the other women
for her brazen behavior. Porgy takes
her in and they fall in love.
As Bess struggles to be true to
her heart and stay with Porgy, she
is tempted by Sportin’ Life, who
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flashes money and drugs and the
promise of a better life. Crown
returns as a hurricane bears down
on the town, and tries to bully her
back. With gallant intentions,
Porgy promises Bess he will pre
vent Crown from taking her. He
fulfills his promise by quietly chok
ing the bully only to end up losing
Bessto Sportin’Life’stemptations.
Despite his disability, Porgy heads
off to find Bess as the opera ends.
- GMM
3C