For the first time its history, the Lyric Opera of Kansas City presents the quintessential American opera, George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess.” The wait was well worth it for this once-in-a-lifetime production. Every element is a triumph — sumptuous singing and deeply felt acting by a stunning all-star cast, impressive staging, brilliant orchestra, and inspired direction by the world-renowned Francesca Zambello.
Set in the Jim Crow South, Porgy and Bess depicts a close-knit, hardscrabble community whose members accept the ways fortune and justice and even nature are turned against them. They know better than to protest when a Black man is hauled off to jail despite all lack of evidence. And in this brutal life, diversions are limited to gambling, drugs and spirituality, of both Christian and West African Gullah Geechee strains.
Yet George Gershwin’s score is buoyant and delightful. His synthesis of spirituals, blues, jazz and classical results in a miraculously seamless, all-new, all-American music that still sounds fresh. Its 1935 premiere run was a commercial failure, with audiences confused by Gershwin’s innovative crossover of classical and popular music. He was innovative in much else too, insisting on all-Black singers and appointing a Black female composer, Eva Jessye (born in Coffeyville, Kansas), to direct the production’s very important chorus. (More on that later).
Of course Gershwin also knew his way around a song. A good number, including “Summertime” and “It Ain’t Necessarily So,” have escaped this opera into the standards repertoire. Here they take on on altogether different, layered meanings, and are performed as Gershwin meant them to be, by exquisitely powerful operatic voices.
With his brooding handsomeness, intense masculinity and muscled physique, Eric Greene creates a potent and moving Porgy. Though deformed, disabled and poor, Porgy is a man of integrity and confidence, with a stillness at his core that calms the troubled Bess. Green’s voice is earthy, velvety, seemly bottomless. His “I Got Plenty o’ Nuttin” is a genial manifesto of radical acceptance that is grounded in awareness of the “somethings” he lacks.
As the beautiful Bess, Michelle Bradley creates a fallen woman whose desirability is her downfall. She is shunned by society, abandoned to those who would prey upon her weaknesses. As she sings: “I wants to stay here, but I ain’t worthy. You is too decent to understand.”
Bradley and Greene are incandescent in the interweaving lines of “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” with its sweetly repeated chorus: “Mornin’ time an’ evenin’ time, an’ summer time an’ winter time.” Bradley’s rich, floating notes hope for a simple happiness than can never be.
Norman Garrett as Jake and Brandie Sutton as Clara make it easy to root for their hard-working, optimistic young family. Sutton’s sparkling renditions of “Summertime” set the tone, supple with tenderness and joie de vivre in the first scene, shadowed with grief in the reprise. Their ideal love presents an effective foil to the compromised Bess, savage Crown and broken outsider Porgy.
Donovan Singletary’s baritone swaggers and seduces as Crown. With his dervish spins, dazzling smile, shiny suit and sinuous tenor, Jermaine Smith is a crowd favorite as the flashy Sportin’ Life. His “It Ain’t Necessarily So” is a showstopper, even before the mid-air splits.
“Porgy and Bess” is the story of a community, and its members, the large, gifted chorus, collectively play nearly the biggest role in the opera, singing and acting in nearly every scene. They are the neighbors who celebrate and mourn with each other, take shelter and pray with each other, shut their doors against each other.
Many members of this chorus, including key solo parts, were recruited from the area, with leads from area Black arts, church and community organizations. Their performances are beautiful and stellar, and represent an incredible depth of local talent.
Under the baton of guest Conductor Michael Ellis Ingram, the always excellent Kansas City Symphony Orchestra has a blast with supplemental additions such as saxophones, African drums and banjo.
Director Francesca Zambello, Artistic director of the Washington National Opera, previously helmed “La Traviata,” “West Side Story” and “The Sound of Music” at the Lyric. She has presented her “Porgy and Bess” in the nation’s capitol as well as Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco and the Glimmerglass Festival, and her love of the material is manifest. Zambello shapes “Porgy and Bess” into a moving and convincing story, with lovely sparks of magic.
In one of the evening’s most theatrical effects, the chorus huddles at stage edge, peering into the ocean, rocking and singing with the hurricane. Above their heads, in an impossible, vividly poignant pantomime, Clara reaches for Jake through the waves. This is image making of a high order, a scene of consummate artistry, and just one of many wonders in this phenomenal production.
All that, and banjo too.
Reviewed February 28, 2026
Lyric Opera of Kansas City
“The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess”
Remaining performances:
7:30PM, Friday, March 6, 2026
2:00PM, Sunday, March 8, 2026
