THE GERSHWIN’S PORGY AND BESS

ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

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2.jpgJust as The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess was getting a green light from the Gershwin estate back in 2011 the adaptation’s authors got a short email message from one of the estate’s trustees. It had two words: BE BOLD.

Judging by this streamlined Porgy and Bess and the remainder of this season there’s no doubt that the Cincinnati Opera’s Evans Mirageas operates all of the time with that belief.

But why The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess and not just Porgy and Bess?

To get a straight answer to that you’d have to go back eight years and ask Diane Paulus, the director who took Gershwin’s opera hand in hand with playwright Susan Lori-Parks, and after negotiating with the Gershwin estate took the loveable old dinosaur of a work into the 21st century, where it has been getting productions in opera houses all over the world.

What director Paulus and playwright Parks did, had no major impact on the music. It is the opera’s libretto that which got trimmed of several chunks of stage fat. Mercifully the surgery brought the show’s running time to today’s 2:30 hours.

Good news: the Cincinnati Opera has taken Gershwin’s glorious music and, in a production originally conceived by Francesca Zambello, The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess is getting what promises to be a rousing rendition on the stage of Music Hall now through July 28.

The show’s success will surely be largely due to a made in heaven cast helmed by  Talise Trevigne, a gleaming soprano and the physically and vocally monumental bass Morris Robinson.

THE GERSHWIN’S PORGY AND BESS RUNS JULY 20, 25, & 27, 2019 | 7:30 PM AND JULY 28, 2019 | 3:00 PM

Published by ALL ABOUT THE ARTS

Rafael de Acha has enjoyed a distinguished career in the arts as a performer, stage director, producer, and educator. He was born and grew up in Cuba. At the age of 17 he moved to the United States to study Drama at the University of Minnesota, and later Languages at L.A. City College, Music at the Juilliard School of Music, at the University of Cincinnati’s College Conservatory of Music, and at the New England Conservatory of Music, from which he received the Master's degree. He has taught courses on the History of Music at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music and at Florida International University, and contributed writings and reviews to Seen and Heard International (www.seenandheard-international.com ) and to this blog. He co-founded the award-winning New Theatre in Coral Gables, Florida, where he produced and staged twenty seasons of classical and contemporary theater, including fifty world premieres of plays that went on to have international and national productions on and off Broadway, including Ana in the Tropics by Nilo Cruz (Pulitzer Prize for Drama 2002 and Tony Nomination 2003.) In 2006 he was presented with a citation from The Dade County Cultural Affairs Council for “trailblazing contributions to the arts in South Florida.”