As soon as I heard it was coming to Broadway, I knew that I wanted to see it and went online to get tickets. I had always loved the music....all those wonderful songs, like "Summertime", "I've Got Plenty of Nothin", "I Love You Porgy", "Bess, You Is My Woman Now", "It Ain'tNecessarily So", and many others. Wednesday's trip into NYC with a group of friends to see the show did not disappoint. Audra McDonald, as Bess, has a magnificent voice, as did Norm Lewis, as Porgy. The minor parts and the ensemble were also terrific.
I thought that it would be fun to rent the 1959 movie with Dorothy Dandridge , Sydney Portier and Sammy Davis Jr., but it is not available. I found out why on Wikipedia: "The Gershwin estate was disappointed with the film, as the score was substantially edited to make it more like a musical. Much of the music was omitted from the film, and many of Gershwin's orchestrations were either changed or completely scrapped. It was shown on network television in the U.S. only once, in 1967. Critics attacked it for not being faithful to Gershwin's opera, for over-refining the language grammatically, and for its "overblown" staging. The film was removed from release in 1974 by the Gershwin estate and can now only be seen in film archives or on bootleg videos." What a shame! I would have loved to see the movie again.
1 comment:
Hi Norma! I went to see the play in Dec. and loved it. I can't wait for the cd to come out.
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