During the era of apartheid in South Africa, several South African theatre companies planned to put on all-white productions of "Porgy and Bess". Ira Gershwin, as heir to his brother, consistently refused to permit these productions to be staged. But in 2009, Cape Town Opera's production, set in 1970s South Africa and inspired by life in Soweto, toured Britain, opening at the Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff and going on to the Royal Festival Hall in London and Edinburgh Festival Theatre. Most of the cast were black South Africans; American singers involved in the production have found the "passionate identification with the opera" by the South African singers "a wake-up call".