During the apartheid regime, South Africa threatened to perform Porgy and Bess with only
white artists. Ira Gershwin, George’s brother, refused to sign the permit needed to be
allowed to perform the opera on stage. So it was never performed there. This is another
thing why Porgy and Bess plays quite a big role in racial issues. Both in America and South
Africa, where segregation was a major thing.
Opinion
I think Porgy and Bess was a really nice experience. It was really nice to go to Arnhem with
all of my fellow students and chat a bit in the bus. We were one of the first to get into the
music hall, so we were sitting on the 4th row. This mend we could hear the orchestra very
clearly and see the performance on stage in good detail. This is partly due to the great
acoustics in the building. I really liked the acting, the artists were really good in expressing
their emotions and you could really follow the storyline just by seeing them act. Also the
man telling the storyline was very handy, because you could now understand the plot a lot
better. Furthermore, there was someone sitting on a table with a sort of beamer drawing
the context. This was really nice to understand and imagine the setting, because he drew
houses, a sea and boats, so you knew the story was set in a fishing town. The singing was
also lovely, but I couldn’t get the lyrics out very good, so that is a bit of a disappointment.
Even though of that, none of the artists had a bad voice. They were working together really
good and everything was in harmony with the background music, which made it even better.
It was shocking to see that Porgy was locked out of the white group. I am a anti-racist, and I
was not amused by this. This is because my nieces are both adopted and Chinese, and I know
that the youngest one was locked out by some classmates. Luckily they are 7 years old and
can still learn about it, but that made me a bit upset. I was very open-minded towards the
performance. I just thought: “Let’s go and see!”. This mend I didn’t have any prejudices.
After the performance I was curious about the context and the setting of the story, because I
hadn’t done any research in advance.