Chineke! Orchestra / Cape Town Opera

When George Gershwin was working on Porgy and Bess, race discrimination was still very much prevalent in public life across large parts of the USA. The quasi-verismo opera is today one of the most frequently performed stage works of the 20th century. As early as 1952, Porgy and Bess was included on the Berliner Festwochen programme at the Titania-Palast in what was then West Berlin, followed by further performances in 1976 and 2021. The opera is focused on the fate of socially deprived Afro-Americans in the southern USA and is set in Cattfish Row, a sleazy alley close to Charleston harbour in South Carolina. Gershwin was at this time one of the most successful Broadway composers. He oriented himself in Porgy and Bess to a wide diversity of musical styles (including influences of jazz and spirituals which are frequently embedded in highly complex musical structures) and ensured that the work was not only performed to elite opera audiences. What is more, he wished Porgy and Bess to be exclusively sung by Black singers: an ideal project for the top-class Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble from South Africa and the Chineke! Orchestra which has now become an integral part of British musical life since its highly acclaimed debut at the prestigious BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall in 2017. The performance will be conducted by Kwamé Ryan, currently music director of the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra based in North Carolina (USA).