The iconic opera of the Jazz Age, Porgy and Bess, by George and Ira Gershwin with DuBose Heyward, returns to Charleston, its city of origin, in a Spoleto Festival USA production. David Herskovits, whose 1998 production of Mamba’s Daughters by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward won an OBIE award and sold out at Spoleto Festival USA in 1999, returns to direct. Celebrated Lowcountry artist Jonathan Green is Visual Designer, creating the fictional "Catfish Row," based on the actual "Cabbage Row."
Noted for his “ravishing, rolling baritone with power to spare” (Opera News), Lester Lynch plays Porgy; soprano Alyson Cambridge, whose performances are “radiant, vocally assured, dramatically subtle and compelling, and artistically imaginative” (The Washington Post), makes her role debut as Bess.
Lynch and Cambridge talk with South Carolina Public Radio's Kate McKinney about what it takes to sing the title roles.