Hints and tips:
...The cast, surely conducted by David Robertson (after a lugubrious tempo for “Summertime”), looks great on paper but seems unbalanced....
...David Herskovits’s direction of principals and chorus, however, could use a stronger profile....
...But “Summertime” was by DuBose Heyward, on whose novel, Porgy, the opera was based. No wordplay here, no puns or ingenious rhymes....
...In the first place, this also happens to be DuBose Heyward’s Porgy. He wrote the libretto and, together with Ira Gershwin, many of the great lyrics. Never mind that technicality....
...This masterpiece, with music by George Gershwin, libretto by DuBose Heyward, and lyrics by Ira Gershwin and Heyward, remains, in essence, as it was at its premiere in 1935....
International Edition