I Loves You, Porgy | |
---|---|
Duet from Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin | |
Genre | Opera, jazz |
Text | Ira Gershwin, DuBose Heyward |
Premiere | |
Date | September 30, 1935 |
Location | Colonial Theatre (Boston) |
"I Loves You, Porgy" is a duet from the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin. [1] It was performed in the opera's premiere in 1935 [2] and on Broadway the same year by Anne Brown and Todd Duncan. [1] They recorded the song on volume 2 of the album Selections from George Gershwin's Folk Opera Porgy and Bess in 1942. [3] The duet occurs in act 2, scene 3, Catfish Row, where Porgy promises Bess that he will protect her. [4] Bess has a lover, Crown, who is abusive and continually seduces her. [4]
The song was popularised by Nina Simone's adaptation from her debut album, Little Girl Blue . [5]
In the lyrics Bess is asking Porgy to stop her from going with Crown, her abusive lover. [4] During the early stages of the opera, Bess' opening stanza was cut out. [6] The re-addition of this stanza into the opera proved crucial in demonstrating Bess' feelings towards Porgy and Crown, as well as showing the extent of Bess's self-understanding. [7] In contrast to the fatal tragedy of Bizet's Carmen and Berg's Marie, Gershwin's Bess is a psychological tragedy. [7] Musicologist Lawrence Starr writes, "she possesses profound self-understanding, and understanding of others, and yet cannot use this knowledge to really help herself do anything more than survive (which of course is already more than Carmen or Marie)." [7]
After the folk-opera's premiere, Duke Ellington said "The times are here to debunk Gershwin's lampblack Negroisms", which was seconded by Ralph Matthews: "The singing, even down to the choral and ensemble numbers, has a conservatory twang." [8]
The representation of the characters' speech in Porgy and Bess is contentious. [4] The folk-opera has been accused of linguistic subordination, where differences of language commonly associated with socio-economically oppressed groups are viewed as linguistic deficits. [4] [9] Naomi André writes: "Coming out of a time when minstrelsy, radio shows such as Amos 'n' Andy , and other media where white actors, singers, and novelists relied on negative stereotypes of black people, Porgy and Bess sounds awkward and dated, at best, to many people today." [4]
Edward D. Latham contends that Gershwin's experimental use of simple rondo form with the main theme as the refrain echoes the tension between Porgy and Bess in the duet, "It is as if Bess is clinging to the refrain for dear life, afraid that if she wanders too far from it, she will lose Porgy's love for good. Once again, it is Porgy who guides Bess back to the home key, re-establishing F major with a half cadence at the end of the B and C sections." [10] Gershwin thereby subverts the rondo forms as a guaranteed sign of confidence and stability into an indication of the situation's volatility. [11] Gershwin had originally changed the title from Porgy to Porgy and Bess to emphasise the romance between the two title characters and accommodate operatic conventions. [4]
On the technicality of Bess's role in the duet, Helen M. Greenwald, chair of the department of music history at New England Conservatory and editor of the Oxford Handbook of Opera, wrote that Bess's solo "requires the legato power of a Puccini heroine". [12]
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Porgy and Bess, however, has faced critiscm from musicological circles who do not see Gershwin's arrangements worthy of the technical description 'opera'. [13] His concert works have largely been neglected by music scholars due to his stylistic ambiguity. [14] David Horn, founding editor of the journal Popular Music and director of the Institute of Popular Music at the University of Liverpool, claims, "Behind this esoteric front, the basic question is Porgy and Bess's stature as a 'work of art', capable (or not) of shedding illumination on fundamental human issues". [13]
Due to the celebrity status of the Gershwins at the time of the opera's premier in New York, 1935, responses to the description of Porgy and Bess as a 'folk play' or 'folk opera' opened discussion surrounding folk culture and in particular, southern black folk culture, into the public forum. [15] [ relevant? ]
Nina Simone's release of "I Loves You, Porgy" and conversations surrounding black representation were contemporaneous. [5] Sarah Tomlinson claimed "while 'I Loves You, Porgy' was one of eleven tracks on her album, it was the only song that had previously been popularised by black women musicians. The song that launched Simone into the public eye was one that fit audience expectations of black women musicianship." [5]
After Gershwin's death in 1937, Porgy and Bess was revived in New York in 1942, a production which toured as well. [16] The popular hits from the opera ("I Loves You, Porgy", "Summertime") maintained circulation on the radio. [16] Leading orchestras in America had "all-Gershwin" programs. [16] Nina Simone's recording of the song (from her first album, Little Girl Blue , 1958 [17] ) went to number eighteen on the Billboard Hot 100 and number two on the R&B charts. [18] Christina Aguilera performed the song at the Grammy Nomination Concert in December 2008. [19] The folk opera Porgy and Bess returned to the Metropolitan Opera for the first time in nearly 30 years for their 2019–20 season. [12] [ relevant? ]
Whilst the folk opera has received criticism that Gershwin biographer Rodney Greenberg describes as a questioning of whether the characters are "the same old black stereotypes with their naive superstitions, their whoring and their gambling?", [20] Bess' character in the opera and her lines in the duet have been praised for adding complexity to her character's psyche. [21] [ relevant? ]
Hall Johnson, who was outspoken on his disagreement with the opera's recitatives, found Bess' duet to be "such vibrant beauty, so replete with the tragedy of the minor spirituals, that most of what follows is made to sound a little more false by reason of the absolute rightness of this episode". [22]
Maya Angelou, who danced in Porgy and Bess' premiere at Milan's La Scala opera house, writes how she connected with the story, also finding the duet's narrative to be compelling: "Who could deny this story? How many Black men had been crippled by American oppression and had lost the women they loved and who loved them, because they hadn't the strength to fight? How often had the women submitted to loveless arrangements for the sake of bare survival?" [23]
George Gershwin was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions Rhapsody in Blue (1924) and An American in Paris (1928), the songs "Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the hit "Summertime".
Porgy and Bess is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play Porgy, itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel of the same name.
Anne Brown was an American soprano for whom George Gershwin rewrote the part of "Bess" into a leading role in the original production of his opera Porgy and Bess in 1935.
Edwin DuBose Heyward was an American author best known for his 1925 novel Porgy. He and his wife Dorothy, a playwright, adapted it as a 1927 play of the same name. The couple worked with composer George Gershwin to adapt the work as the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. It was later adapted as a 1959 film of the same name.
"Summertime" is an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based, and Ira Gershwin.
Blue Monday was the original name of a one-act "jazz opera" by George Gershwin, renamed 135th Street during a later production. The English libretto was written by Buddy DeSylva. Though a short piece, with a running time of between twenty and thirty minutes, Blue Monday is often considered the blueprint to many of Gershwin's later works, and is often considered to be the "first piece of symphonic jazz" in that it was the first significant attempt to fuse forms of classical music such as opera with American popular music, with the opera largely influenced by Jazz and the African-American culture of Harlem.
Porgy and Bess, the opera by George Gershwin, has been recorded by a variety of artists since it was completed in 1935, including renditions by jazz instrumentalists and vocalists, in addition to operatic treatments.
Porgy and Bess is a 1959 American musical drama film directed by Otto Preminger, and starring Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge in the titular roles. It is based on the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin, DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin, in turn based on Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy, as well as Heyward's subsequent 1927 non-musical stage adaptation, co-written with his wife Dorothy. The film's screenplay, which turned the operatic recitatives into spoken dialogue, was very closely based on the opera and was written by N. Richard Nash.
Catfish Row, originally titled Suite from Porgy and Bess, is an orchestral work by George Gershwin based upon music from his famous opera Porgy and Bess. Gershwin completed the work in 1936 and it premiered at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia on January 21 of that year, with Alexander Smallens conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra. Gershwin played the piano part, including the piano solo in the opening moments. This piece preserves some of the darkest and most complex music Gershwin ever wrote.
Porgy and Bess: A Symphonic Picture is a 1942 orchestral medley arranged by George Gershwin's good friend and sometimes assistant, Robert Russell Bennett, which includes most of the best-known songs from the Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess, although not in the exact order of their appearance. Though the Symphonic Picture is sometimes dismissed as a sequence of the opera's "greatest hits," the first well-known melody, "Summertime," is not heard until nearly seven minutes into the work. While some of the more esoteric parts of the opera are absent, many of the catchier tunes that can be heard in this suite are absent in others, including Gershwin's own Catfish Row Suite, which tended to highlight the more cerebral elements of the work.
"It Ain't Necessarily So" is a popular song with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by his brother Ira Gershwin. The song comes from the Gershwins' opera Porgy and Bess (1935) where it is sung by the character Sportin' Life, a drug dealer, who expresses his doubt about several statements in the Bible. The song's melody also functions as a theme for Sportin' Life's character.
Nina Simone with Strings is an album by Nina Simone. The album was released after she had left Colpix Records. The tracks on the album were assembled by combining unreleased material with recordings of strings.
Nina Simone in Concert is an album by the jazz singer Nina Simone. It is her first album for the record label Philips, composed of three live recordings made at Carnegie Hall, New York City, in March and April 1964. Simone recorded Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall in 1963 for Colpix. This album marked the beginning of Simone's explicitly Civil Rights oriented music and she incorporated civil rights messaging into her performances. Included on the album are unambiguous political songs such as "Mississippi Goddamn", released as a single at the time. However, songs such as "Old Jim Crow", "Go Limp", and "Pirate Jenny" contributed to the political and civil rights messaging in a more covert or metaphorical way. The album was rated as the 94th best album of the 1960s by Pitchfork.
'Nuff Said! is an album by jazz singer/pianist/songwriter Nina Simone. It was recorded (excluding tracks at Westbury Music Fair, April 7, 1968, three days after the murder of Martin Luther King Jr. The whole program that night was dedicated in his memory. The album received an Emmy nomination and featured one of Simone's biggest hits in Europe, "Ain't Got No, I Got Life".
"My Man's Gone Now" is an aria composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by DuBose Heyward, written for the opera Porgy and Bess (1935).
Porgy & Bess is a 1997 album by the jazz saxophonist Joe Henderson, released on Verve Records. It contains Henderson's arrangements of music from George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess. It was his final album as a leader.
"Bess, You Is My Woman Now" is a duet with music by George Gershwin and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and DuBose Heyward. This song comes from the Gershwins' opera Porgy and Bess (1935) where it is sung by the main character Porgy and his beloved Bess. They express their love for each other and say that they now belong together.
"I Got Plenty o' Nuttin' " is a song composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 "folk-opera" Porgy and Bess (1934). The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based, and Ira Gershwin. It is one of the most famous songs from the opera and it has been recorded by hundreds of singers and music groups.
Porgy and Bess is a 1959 album by Sammy Davis Jr. of selections from George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess co-starring Carmen McRae. Davis is accompanied by orchestras conducted by Buddy Bregman and Morty Stevens, sometimes supported by the Bill Thompson singers. McRae is featured on three of the ten songs, "Summertime", "My Man's Gone Now" and the only duet, "I Loves You, Porgy", all three backed by an orchestra directed by Jack Pleis. "The record is piled to the sky with strings, harps, choruses, and pillowy orchestration," writes Tim Sendra on Allmusic, but "credit[s] Sammy and Carmen for holding up their end of the deal."
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