The work
The year was 1926, and it had been a busy day for George Gershwin. His new musical comedy Oh, Kay! was in rehearsal, and when the composer went to bed that evening he reached for some light reading material to lull himself to sleep. Instead he picked up Porgy, a recently published novel by the American writer DuBose Heyward.
Heyward’s wife Dorothy reported that, far from dozing off swiftly, Gershwin ‘read himself wide awake’ that night, gripped by her husband’s dark, gritty tale of African American life in the tenements of Charleston, South Carolina. By four in the morning, Gershwin knew the story was ideal for an opera, and dashed off a letter to Heyward suggesting a meeting.
Murder, race issues, domestic violence and substance abuse all feature in
