If any work can be dubbed as ‘The Great American Opera’, it is Gershwin’s genre-transgressing masterpiece, Porgy and Bess. It was based on white Southern writer DuBose Heyward’s novel Porgy (1925), as well as on his highly successful stage adaptation of the novel which had been a hit in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Heyward was of Southern ‘aristocratic’ stock, but had strong connections with the black community in his native Charleston. When the collaboration with Gershwin was set in train, Gershwin joined him in Charleston and experienced at first hand the music and traditions of the local Gullah community.

Gershwin was, of course, already renowned as a Broadway composer, and his forays into art music were greatly admired by many. Ironically, Gershwin seems to have felt that he needed more education in classical music, often seeking lessons from celebrated contemporary composers. A mutual admiration developed between him and Alban Berg – they would write two of the greatest operas of the twntieth century – with Wozzeck (1925) regarded by many as the century-defining work. Although vastly different in musical idiom, Porgy owes much to Wozzeck. One of Gershwin’s prize possessions was a score of Berg’s opera; he saw the American première of the opera, and he learned much about musical and dramaturgical structure from Berg: the ability to integrate vastly different musical elements into an organic whole.