The Theatre Guild Production of Porgy and Bess

Abstract

Recent performances of George Gershwin's opera Porgy and Bess have been based on the uncut score as published by the Gershwin Publishing Corporation, on the assumption that the composer intended it to be played in this "complete" form. Gershwin sent his score to the publisher some months before the New York premiere, mounted by the Theatre Guild on 10 October 1935 after a tryout performance in Boston. Extensive cuts and other changes were made during rehearsals and after Boston, all initiated or approved by Gershwin, who was intimately involved in the production; none of this is reflected in the published score, which was never revised. Five scores used in the Theatre Guild production enable us to reconstruct the opera as it was staged for the first time, in the form in which the composer "intended it to be played" on this occasion, and it is argued that consideration should be given to performing it this way today.

Performance and the Socialized Text

“…I am grateful to Mr. Shirley for sharing this information with me prior to its publication. Hamm (1987) has argued that the 1932 production by the Theatre Guild should be regarded as the defining production of this work, and, were other productions to imitate it, Mamoulian's sequence would become an accepted part of the opera.…”