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Donald Macleod explores the origins and difficult evolution of George Gershwin’s long-awaited opera Porgy and Bess.

In 1926 friends gave George Gershwin a copy of a novel called Porgy by DuBose Heyward. It was set among the labourers and stevedores of Charleston, South Carolina. Gershwin sat up all night reading Porgy and in the morning wrote to Heyward to suggest they develop it into an opera together.

It would be almost ten years before that work came to the stage. But when it did, in the shape of Porgy and Bess – the story of the inhabitants of Catfish Row and the love affair between the beggar, Porgy, and a young prostitute, Bess – it became Gershwin’s final great work, lauded by many as the First Great American Opera.

They Can’t Take that Away From Me
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Jasbo Brown Blues
Richard Rodney Bennett, piano

Summertime
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Simon Rattle, conductor
Glyndebourne Chorus
Harolyn Blackwell, soprano

It Ain't Necessarily So (arr. Heifetz)
Randall Goosby, violin
Zhu Wang, piano

Bess, You is my Woman Now
Charles Lloyd, alto sax
Jason Moran, piano

Catfish Row Suite
Gewandhausorchester Leipzig
Riccardo Chailly, conductor
Stefano Bollani, piano

Rhapsody in Blue
George Gershwin, piano roll recording