HGO’s 1976 Porgy and Bess
Following the 1935 premiere of Porgy and Bess, the Gershwins’ opera gradually degraded from the creators’ original concept. In 1976, producer Sherwin Goldman approached HGO about mounting a new staging to celebrate the American centennial. David Gockley, the company’s ambitious young general director, entrusted the creative team with the task of undoing the damage that had been done to the opera. Their efforts resulted in a multi-award-winning production of Porgy that put HGO on the international map.
Jack O’Brien, director
A relatively unknown opera director in 1976, O’Brien would go on to win a Tony for his 2002 production of Hairspray. His approach to staging Porgy was to “give it back to the people it was created for.” O’Brien involved the Black chorus members as co-creators and brought African American artists onto his team.
John DeMain, conductor
The future music director of HGO resisted the tendency of previous arrangers to treat Gershwin’s score as a string of hit showtunes. He restored the work to its full operatic scale and cast classically trained soloists. “I felt very confident that we should let the public hear as much of the piece as we could,” he explains.
Donnie Ray Albert, Porgy
To prepare for his breakout role, the baritone underwent a kind of “bootcamp” with William Warfield, who had played Porgy in the 1952 tour. Albert performed the nearly three-hour opera on his knees—a feat inspired by an encounter he had with a Houston beggar. He returns to HGO in 2025 to make a cameo as Lawyer Frazier in Francesca Zambello’s production.
Clamma Dale, Bess
The soprano was awarded a Drama Desk Award for her dignified portrayal of Bess. “My interpretation is that Bess is very together,” she said in an interview, “She memorizes names, knows how to dress to attract attention, and she knows how to deal with Crown.’”
Larry Marshall, Sportin’ Life
Marshall was already a rising film and Broadway star by 1976, having appeared in the 1973 movie version of Jesus Christ Superstar. After the HGO Porgy, he went on to play Cab Calloway—himself a famous interpreter of Sportin’ Life—in the 1984 Coppola film The Cotton Club.
After Porgy closed at HGO, the production moved to Broadway, where it played eight times a week at the Uris Theater. The Tony-winning run was attended by Leonard Bernstein himself, who according to DeMain, told him: “I have waited 40 years to hear this piece done this way. You’ve done it. Now I don’t have to!”
In between Broadway performances, DeMain and the main cast recorded the complete score at RCA Studios. It was awarded the Grammy for Best Opera Recording—only a year after Lorin Maazel’s Porgy album won the same award.
Read more from John DeMain, Jack O’Brien, and Donnie Ray Albert about HGO’s 1976 production of Porgy and Bess.
