Eighty years ago, on Sept. 26, 1935, something happened on Broadway that had never happened before.
Under the direction of composer George Gershwin and stage director RoubenMamoulian, an all-black cast premiered a folk opera portraying the lives and times of a South Carolina Gullah community in music that blended jazz and other popular music idioms with classical music.
The work, Porgy and Bess, left people tapping their toes to some of the most ear-catching tunes ever penned. This week on The American Sound we'll enjoy some of Gershwin's timeless hits - along with some little-heard moments only recently recorded and reflections by Columbus-based Porgy and Bess expert David Weaver - in a program that celebrates the 80th anniversary of the premiere of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, 6 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Tuesday on Classical 101.
But the first performances of Porgy and Bess also left people scratching their heads. Up to that time, operas in the standard repertoire had depicted mythological subjects (like Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungs cycle and countless operas before it), historical personages (like Verdi's Nabucco and Don Carlos) or the real lives of regular people (like Puccini's La Bohème or Leoncavallo's Pagliacci), not the lives of African Americans. Up to that time the musical scores of operas unfolded in the resplendent sounds of European classical music, not in freewheeling jazz riffs. And up to that time, Broadway was the place for musicals and vaudeville-style revues, but not for operas.
Learn more about Gershwin's ground-breaking opera in my interview with American music expert Joseph Horowitz, author of On My Way: The Untold Story of Rouben Mamoulian, George Gershwin and Porgy and Bess.
And tune in to enjoy great moments from Porgy and Bess on The American Sound, 6 p.m. Saturday and 7 p.m. Tuesday on Classical 101.
