Porgy and Bess
George Gershwin
['George', 'Ashley Tisdale', 'Satyajit Ray', 'Arrigo Boito', 'Arjun Janya', 'Marvin', 'Antonio Salieri', 'Wynton Marsalis', 'Lennon', 'Samuel Hoffenstein', 'Geezer Butler', 'Carlos Puebla', 'Hector Berlioz', 'Taneyev', 'Hugh Martin', 'Pete Townshend', 'Alfredo Catalani', 'Ian', 'Willie Dixon', 'Piazzolla', 'Slim Shady', 'Jake Shears', 'Steve Marriott', 'Hitoshi Sakimoto', 'Shankar Jaikishan', 'Grant Kirkhope', 'Hotei', 'Basil Poledouris', 'Zimmermann', 'Biafra', 'Vusi Mahlasela', 'Gustav Holst', 'Robert Rodriguez', 'Bappi Lahari', 'Johann Strauss II', 'Billy Bragg', 'Jaidev', 'David Byrne', 'John Sebastian', 'Joe Hisaishi', 'Bob Gaudio', 'Mike Figgis', 'Stevie Nicks', 'Yuvan Shankar Raja', 'Thelonious Monk', 'Ron Grainer', 'Jacques Brel', 'Jimmy McHugh', 'Verdian', 'Joplin', 'Selena', 'Heinrich Marschner', 'Gustav Mahler', 'Simon Mayr', 'Herbie Hancock', 'Carl Nielsen', 'Avicii', 'Nielsen', 'Juelz Santana', 'Liszt', 'Offenbach', 'Shinji Aoyama', 'John Waters', 'Ian Gillan', 'Gioacchino Rossini', 'Roger Miller', 'Ravi Shankar', 'Jacques Offenbach', 'David Gilmour', 'Goutom Ghosh', 'Hank Williams', 'Bobby Womack', 'Rabindranath Tagore', 'Laurie Anderson', 'Mick Jagger', 'Bruce Kimmel', 'Van Morrison', 'Bernd Alois Zimmermann', 'Jimmy Forrest', 'Jule Styne', 'Danielle Brisebois', 'John Cale', 'Randy Newman', 'Timbaland', 'Ira Gershwin', 'Yo Yo Honey Singh', 'Jerry Goldsmith', 'Quincy Jones', 'Patrick Leonard', 'Bill Conti', 'Garth Brooks', 'Rachmaninoff', 'Darren Criss', 'Illayaraja', 'Ilaiyaraja', 'Michel Legrand', 'Akshaya Mohanty', 'Peter Serafinowicz', 'Gangai Amaran']
Porgy and Bess
Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera composed in 1934 by George Gershwin, with a libretto written by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin from Heyward's novel Porgy and later play of the same title. Porgy and Bess was first performed in New York City on September 30, 1935, and featured an entire cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. After suffering from an initially unpopular public reception due in part to its racially charged theme, the Houston Grand Opera production of the opera in 1976 gained it new popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed operas. Gershwin read Porgy in 1926 and proposed that he should collaborate with Heyward on Porgy and Bess. In 1934, Gershwin and Heyward began work on the project by visiting the author's native Charleston. Gershwin explained why he called Porgy and Bess a folk opera in a 1935 New York Times article: "Porgy and Bess is a folk tale. Its people naturally would sing folk music. When I first began work in the music I decided against the use of original folk material because I wanted the music to be all of one piece. Therefore I wrote my own spirituals and folksongs. But they are still folk music – and therefore, being in operatic form, Porgy and Bess becomes a folk opera." The libretto of Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled street-beggar living in the slums of Charleston, South Carolina. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin' Life he drug dealer. Where the earlier novel and stage-play differ, the opera generally follows the stage-play. In the years following Gershwin's death, Porgy and Bess was adapted for smaller scale performances and was later adapted into a film in 1959. Some of the songs in the opera, such as "Summertime" became popular and frequently recorded songs. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the trend has been towards reproducing a greater fidelity to Gershwin's original intentions although other smaller-scale productions continued to be mounted. A complete version of the score was released in 1976; since then, it has been recorded several times.