Porgy and Bess Opera Receives Chinese Premiere at the Beijing Music Festival

Gershwin's famed opera was brought to Chinese audiences, performed by Cape Town Opera and the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra

The 27th edition of the Beijing Music Festival, in China, came to a close last month under the theme of Voices From Afar. Presented each fall, the festival is dedicated to promoting traditional Chinese culture and creativity, in addition to encouraging both Western and Chinese contemporary music.

Founded in 1998 by conductor Long Yu, the Beijing Music Festival has presented many performances with historic significance — including the Chinese premiere of Mahler's Symphony No. 8, the Asian premiere of Berg's Lulu, and the Chinese premiere of Wagner's complete Ring Cycle.

This year, the festival presented the China premiere of the American opera Porgy and Bess at the Poly Theatre. Directed by Noa Naamat and conducted by Kazem Abdullah, the new semi-staged production was presented in co-production between the Beijing Music Festival, Cape Town Opera, and KT Wong Foundation.

"My favorite memory from the rehearsals was the first Sitzprobe when the cast and chorus of Porgy and Bess from Cape Town, sang together with the Shanghai Symphony," Abdullah told The Violin Channel. "It was the orchestra‘s first time playing the opera and it is always amazing for me as a conductor to rehearse two groups separately and then bring them together as one performing unit."

George Gershwin composed the full-length opera based on DuBose Heyward’s novel, Porgy, which concerns the life and struggles of an African American community in Catfish Row, South Carolina.

In 1933, Gershwin, his brother Ira, and Heyward signed a contract with the New York's Theatre Guild to stage the work as an opera. Early the next year, Gershwin started work on the score, spending the summer in South Carolina, and completed work in early 1935.

At the Beijing Music Festival, the Cape Town Opera and dozens of artists from the Cape Town Chorus traveled from South Africa to perform the work with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra. The Cape Town Opera, which celebrated its 25th birthday in 2024, is the only continuously active opera company on the African continent. Otto Maidi performed as Porgy and Nonglanla Yande as Bess.

"The audiences in China were so enthusiastic!" Abdullah commented on the reception of the performance. "It was particularly interesting for me to both hear and see the audience in Shanghai. In the hall in Shanghai,  the audience can sit behind the orchestra so I could see the audience well. They were so engaged in the story and they clearly enjoyed the classic well known parts of the opera that are so well known to American audiences. The production (done by Noa Namaat) was very clear, streamlined and quite dynamic. The combination of video and modern costumes really made the production about community in Porgy and Bess and the love story of Porgy and Bess. I think the audiences also enjoyed not only seeing the cast onstage but also seeing the orchestra and how they interacted at certain points."