Porgy and Bess

The story of Porgy and Bess

Set in the 1920s in the fictional Catfish Row, a waterfront community in South Carolina, the story centers on Porgy, a disabled man, and his love for Bess, a woman trying to escape a troubled past and the grip of a dangerous man in her life. Their relationship unfolds against the daily rhythms and hardships of the community around them.

The work draws on the texture of Southern Black community life of its era, telling a story of love, resilience, and struggle that is both intimate in its central romance and expansive in its portrait of a whole community.

The music and the makers

George Gershwin composed Porgy and Bess as a fully sung-through opera, drawing on jazz, blues, and spiritual traditions to create a score that fuses classical ambition with distinctly American musical vocabulary. Because it is sung-through rather than built around spoken dialogue, it occupies a unique space between the opera house and the Broadway stage.

The score includes some of the most enduring melodies in American music, songs that have been recorded and reinterpreted by countless jazz and popular artists over the decades, a testament to how deeply Gershwin's musical language has permeated American culture.

Porgy and Bess on Broadway

Porgy and Bess premiered in the 1930s and has had a complicated, evolving history on Broadway and in opera houses since, with productions varying between full-scale operatic stagings and more streamlined musical theatre versions. Its scale and ambition set it apart from the typical Broadway musical of its day.

Over time it has come to be recognized as a landmark work bridging opera and musical theatre, admired for its musical richness even as its portrayal of its characters and setting has prompted ongoing conversation and reinterpretation in later revivals.

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