Porgy and Bess

• Main
• YMMV
• Wikipedia
• All Subpages
• Create New

"Summer time; and the livin' is easy...Daddy's rich, and you're Mama's good lookin'..." —"Summertime"

Porgy And Bess is Gershwin's famous Opera, based on DuBose and Dorothy Hayward's book and play Porgy.

Conceived as an American Folk Opera, Porgy and Bess is Gershwin's take on the life of African-American fishermen scraping out an existence on Catfish Row, a fictitious locale based on Cabbage Row in Charleston South Carolina.

Bess is addicted to "Happy dust" (Cocaine), and strung along by her dealer/boyfriend Crown. When Crown kills another man over a craps game he escapes to a nearby island, leaving Bess. Porgy a peddler well-liked in the community, takes her in. The story unfolds with Porgy and Bess' blossoming relationship and what happens to them in Catfish Row.

Opened to great controversy in 1935, but the music and themes are classic, and is now regarded as one of the great American opera; no other American opera comes anywhere near the popularity and critical acclaim (both domestic and abroad).

From The Other Wiki:

"Summertime" is by far the best-known piece from the work, and countless interpretations of this and other individual numbers have also been recorded and performed. The second best-known number is "It Ain't Necessarily So". The opera is admired for Gershwin's innovative synthesis of European orchestral techniques with American jazz and folk music idioms.

The play was made into a movie in 1959.

---

Tropes used in Porgy and Bess include:

• All Musicals Are Adaptations/Adaptation Displacement
• Babies Make Everything Better: Hinted at after Porgy and Bess adopt Clara's baby.
• Beta Couple: Clara and Jake are stable and deeply in love, in contrast to Porgy and Bess who, while in love, have many problems. However, their lives end in tragedy just the same.
• Blackface: Always averted, despite premiering at a time when the blackface tradition was still current.
  • Gershwin actually had the opportunity to have the opera debut at the Met (a composer's wet dream), but refused, as the cast would have been in blackface.
• Chekhov's Gun: The cotton hook.
• The Corrupter: Sportin' Life, who is something of a devil analogue.
• Covered Up: Modern audiences can be so used to hearing Summertime as a jazz standard that the original aria can be jarring.
• Drugs Are Bad
• For Doom the Bell Tolls: The hurricane bell.
• The Final Temptation: Sportin' Life gives this to Bess after Porgy is arrested with "There's A Boat That's Leaving Soon From New York." He succeeds.
• Grief Song: "Gone, Gone, Gone," "My Man's Gone Now," and "Clara, Clara"
• "I Am" Song: "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'"
• Inspirationally Disadvantaged: Porgy is arguably a Tropes Are Not Bad example.
• Manipulative Bastard: Sportin' Life.
• Name and Name
• Pet the Dog: Crown interrupts trying to kill Porgy and Bess to venture out into a hurricane and try to rescue Clara, most of the characters believing until his reappearance that it was at the expense of his own life.
• Pimp Duds: Not the precise outfit, given the time period, but Sportin' Life's flashy wardrobe is in a similar spirit.
• Rape Is Love: On Kittiwah Island, Crown attempts to rape Bess, and in so doing ends up seducing her instead.
• Reformed but Rejected: Bess faces this mildly from the whole community, who at least tries to help her prove herself. She especially gets this from Serena, however - who has an understandably reason, given that Bess is partially responsible for her husband's death.
• Religion Rant Song: "It ain't necessarily so"
• Saintly Church
• Sassy Black Woman
• Villain Song: "It Ain't Necessarily So," and "There's A Boat That's Leaving Soon For New York" for Sportin' Life. Half of "What You Want With Bess," is sung by Crown.
• "The Villain Sucks" Song: "Friends With You, Low-Life?" about Sportin' Life. It quickly turns from a "villain sucks" song to a "you [the villain] suck and if you don't leave my presence I'll make you leave" song.