Since its 1935 premiere, Porgy and Bess has not only been the center of a tug-of-war over whether it’s an opera—as George Gershwin conceived it—or a musical; more damagingly, it’s been the victim of ...

The Metropolitan Opera has an eye on relatively modern favorites this week as its Nightly Met Streams series highlights 20th-century titles. The free streams are available starting at 7:30 PM ET each ...

In the third or fourth phase of his illustrious career, Miles Davis recorded an album called Porgy and Bess. The title didn’t indicate that he was playing the music that George Gershwin had created ...

Soprano Angel Blue as Bess and bass-baritone Michael Sumuel as Porgy in HGO's productionof Porgy and Bess. Credit: Michael Bishop When George Gershwin died in Hollywood in 1937 at the age of 38 from a ...

Best Leading Actress in a Musical: Audra McDonald won. 2012 Drama Desk Awards Outstanding Actor in a Musical : Norm Lewis was nominated but did not win. Outstanding Actress in a Musical : Audra ...

From the first chords of “Porgy and Bess,” you just know this will be a different sort of opera experience. The jaunty brass section pounds out its slightly syncopated phrases as a xylophone – and ...

2012 Tony Awards Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical Phillip Boykin 2012 Tony Awards Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Role in a Musical David Alan Grier 2012 Tony ...

Awash in the hard light of a summer afternoon in South Carolina, the opening scene of Washington National Opera’s “Porgy and Bess” bears the muted sepia glow of an old photograph — one that springs to ...

"Porgy and Bess" is a masterpiece and a problem. The Gershwins' self-styled "folk opera" runs almost four hours, requires an orchestra of 56 and an ever larger cast of black performers with ...

Last Friday night while protesters were being shoved into unmarked vans in Portland by federal paramilitaries, PBS broadcast George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in its Great Performances series. The ...

Opera is an oft-maligned and misunderstood art form. From the outside, it appears to be a relic of Gilded Age opulence and irrelevant. And yet the high drama and emotion, always a little extra, is ...