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Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

Eric Owens (Porgy), Angel Blue (Bess), Latonia Moore (Serena), Golda Schultz (Clara), Denyce Graves (Maria), Frederick Ballentine (Sportin’ Life), Alfred Walker (Crown), Ryan Speedo Green (Jake), Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, David Robertson

Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

Awards:

The chorus supplies precision and refulgent tone, while the orchestral playing is clean and idiomatic, with conductor David Robertson shaping an interpretation that is well-paced and offers...

Gershwin: Porgy and Bess

Eric Owens (Porgy), Angel Blue (Bess), Latonia Moore (Serena), Golda Schultz (Clara), Denyce Graves (Maria), Frederick Ballentine (Sportin’ Life), Alfred Walker (Crown), Ryan Speedo Green (Jake), Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, David Robertson

Purchase product

3 CDs

$28.75

This item is currently out of stock at the UK distributor. You may order it now but please be aware that it may be six weeks or more before it can be despatched.

Awards:

The chorus supplies precision and refulgent tone, while the orchestral playing is clean and idiomatic, with conductor David Robertson shaping an interpretation that is well-paced and offers...

About

To open the 2019–20 season, The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess returned to the Met stage for the first time in nearly 30 years. The acclaimed new production of America’s favorite opera is captured in this three-CD set headlined by Eric Owens and Angel Blue in the title roles. David Robertson conducts a superb cast, which also features Latonia Moore, Golda Schultz, Alfred Walker, Frederick Ballentine, and Denyce Graves.

Breaking company box-office records, The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess was even extended for an unprecedented three additional performances in February 2020.

The production was also seen in cinemas around the world on February 1 as part of the Met’s Live in HD series and was one of the most successful transmissions in the series’s history. Seen live on more than 1,900 screens in nearly 60 countries, the opera reached an estimated 191,095 people. And with delayed showings in Australia, Bermuda, Denmark, India, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and South Africa—as well as encore performances in North America and Europe—worldwide attendance of The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess will surely reach more than 325,000.

“A Porgy of its time that speaks to ours” —The Washington Post

“Authoritative and gripping ... The magnificent bass-baritone Eric Owens gives one of the finest performances of his distinguished career … The sumptuously voiced soprano Angel Blue is radiant … Every singer in the cast was outstanding … A splendid Porgy and Bess” —The New York Times

“Sheer sonic grandeur ... The Met’s uniformly well-cast new production of the famed American opera paints a vivid portrait.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Musical superpowers on the Met’s stage ... Eric Owens lends hard-earned Wagnerian majesty to the title role ... Angel Blue sings with polished radiance

... The Met does the score proud ... A gorgeous Porgy and Bess” —New York magazine

“The Met’s new production of Porgy and Bess is a wonder ... a triumph ... Angel Blue is an extraordinary Bess”. —The Economist

Contents and tracklist

Awards and reviews

June 2020

The chorus supplies precision and refulgent tone, while the orchestral playing is clean and idiomatic, with conductor David Robertson shaping an interpretation that is well-paced and offers both good balance and plenty of fine detail…Owens’s grand and enriched baritone helps him convey Porgy’s indomitable spirit in fully three-dimensional form. He’s admirably partnered by Angel Blue, her resplendent soprano soaring aloft as she charts Bess’s emotional complexity.

June 2020

The cast is strong...Angel Blue’s Bess might just be the finest since Leontyne Price’s...Though lacking Willard White’s vocal ardour, Owens’s stoical conception of the role and grainier vocal quality are by no means incompatible with the older protagonist the story implies...David Robertson conducts with perspicacity, prizing fine detail over swing or drive – which is one way to go.

September 2020

A happy, indeed magnificent, outcome it is—despite whatever quibbles might arise about ‘cuts’ (the opera exists in a number of different versions)...That aside, the recording is an unmitigated triumph, offering a veritable feast of voices fabulously rich and textured, but also luminous, strong and wonderfully agile. For me, the most memorable are the three sopranos [Angel Blue, Golda Schultz, and Latonia Moore].

26th April 2020

Robertson conducts a lively performance, led by Eric Owens’s gruff yet dignified Porgy, while Angel Blue’s lustrous Bess and Latonia Moore’s glorious Serena — who gets the biggest hand of the evening for My Man’s Gone Now — don’t come much better.

20th March 2020

Much of the recording was undertaken during the opening night, obviously an occasion when electricity crackled in the air. Right from the start you are hit by the sharp rhythms and drive encouraged by the orchestra’s conductor, David Robertson.
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