Everything about Porgy totally explained
Porgy is a novel written by
DuBose Heyward in
1925, as well as a play
Dorothy Heyward helped him to write which debuted in
1927.
Even before the play had been fully written, Heyward was in discussions with
George Gershwin for an operatic version of his novel, which debuted in
1935 as
Porgy and Bess (renamed to distinguish it from the play).
Novel
The novel tells the story of Porgy, a crippled street-beggar in the black tenements of
Charleston, South Carolina in the 1920s. The character was based on the real-life Charlestonian Samuel Smalls. The novel features passages which have the characters speaking in the
Gullah language.
Play
DuBose Heyward's wife, Dorothy Heyward, began working on a staged adaptation of her husband's novel soon after it was published in 1925. Some elements of the storyline in the play differ considerably from those in the novel.
George and
Ira Gershwin, along with DuBose Heyward, based the libretto of their opera version,
Porgy and Bess, not on the original novel, but on the play. (In the novel, after Bess leaves Porgy and goes to New York, he merely returns, disillusioned, to being a beggar. At the end of both the play and the opera, he goes to New York, hoping to find her.)
Porgy debuted on Broadway at the Guild Theatre (today's
Virginia Theatre) on
October 10,
1927 and ran for 367 performances. It was directed by
Rouben Mamoulian.
A 1929 revival was less successful, opening on
September 13,
1929 and closing one month later after only 34 performances at the Martin Beck Theatre (today's
Al Hirschfeld Theatre).
Further Information
Get more info on 'Porgy'.
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