Summertime, It Ain’t Necessarily So, I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin’: in Porgy and Bess, George Gershwin strings together one hit after another. That can make it easy to forget that he did not compose a glittering Broadway musical but a groundbreaking serious opera — even if it sounds less like Wagner or Verdi and more like spirituals and jazz. It tackles unemployment and poverty, drugs and murder — and at its center is the tragic love story between the disabled beggar Porgy and the troubled Bess. Above all, however, the opera takes place within an African American community — for the first time in the history of musical theater. That was an act of courage in the 1930s, at the height of racial discrimination — one just as bold as Gershwin’s insistence that Porgy and Bess be performed exclusively by Black singers. At Lucerne Festival, you can experience America’s most famous and successful opera with the ensemble of Cape Town Opera, South Africa’s only opera company. And the acclaimed Chineke! Orchestra — returning to Lake Lucerne after its enthusiastic reception in the summers of 2022 and 2024 — is likewise composed predominantly of People of Color.
