Summertime and the livin' is easy
Fresh from touring the world's finest opera houses, American opera director Francesca Zambello's critically acclaimed adaptation of George Gershwin's folk opera masterpiece Porgy and Bess returns to the Washington National Opera in 2024. Marrying music with action, energy and passion, Zambello has been universally praised for breathing new life into one of the greatest American musicals of the 20th century.
Unforgettable spiritual and folk-tinged tunes like Summertime and It Ain't Necessarily So punctuate the love story of crippled beggar Porgy and the fiery Bess. When Bess' possessive lover Crown kills a man during a fight he started, he runs away, leaving Bess to fend for herself. All the other inhabitants on Catfish Row in Charleston, South Carolina refuse to give her shelter save for Porgy and their ensuing romance is threatened by Bess' past struggles with drugs and the wrong people.