TREVOR NUNN : “Porgy”--On Its Way

George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” is the most popular American opera ever written. Some of its songs--”Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and “I Got Plenty of Nothin’ ” eamong them--are known worldwide.

Yet only now is the work finally receiving its U.S. television premiere, almost 60 years after it was composed.

The production of “Porgy and Bess,” funded jointly by the TV series “American Playhouse” and “Great Performances,” along with Britain’s BBC, will air Wednesday on PBS.

Yet it almost did not make it to TV screens. Director Trevor Nunn, who for 18 years ran Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company and was more recently director of such hit musicals as “Cats,” “Les Miserables” and “Starlight Express,” tried and failed to secure a movie deal for “Porgy and Bess,” before trying his luck with public television.

Nunn talked to David Gritten about the problems of getting “Porgy and Bess” made, and why he believes it so richly merits a revival.

Isn’t “Porgy and Bess” rather a big work for small screens?

Yes. It needs a filmic scale. But we’re being as ambitious as we can. We have a large enough budget (about $4 million) to give us a large studio set-up, a complex set which can give us two different interiors and a variety of exteriors. There’s not a square inch of studio we haven’t used. But we have no locations, nor an entire set for each sequence.

This started with plans to film it as a major movie release. It was budgeted at $14 million when it was discussed first. It was to be shot on location in Charleston, S.C., where the story’s set. But it slipped through our fingers for various reasons. Then another attempt to make the film in 10 weeks in a studio fell through. Now we’re doing it for TV in 16 days.

Why was Hollywood so reluctant?

One executive said: “First off, it’s about black people, which means no white people will go see it. Second it’s written by a white man, which means no black people will go see it. Third, it’s an opera. Which means no one will go see it.”

And what do you say to that?

I say it’s a great American masterpiece. There’s potentially a gigantic audience. Most of America knows most of the score of “Porgy,” even if they don’t know they know it.

But it’s the same problem that assails all such projects. “Porgy and Bess” is tainted by being a classic. We are concerned here with a masterpiece that can’t be tampered with. It’s sung from beginning to end.

This cast of “Porgy and Bess” has performed the work together before, right?

Almost all of them did it at (England’s) Glyndebourne Opera in 1986. The Gershwin estate indicated they would be happy for a movie to be made with that same cast, with Willard White as Porgy, Cynthia Haymon as Bess and everyone else. But we couldn’t make the film happen.

It was on the occasion of Covent Garden Opera House in London saying they would like to get the Glyndebourne cast back together when I said I’d love it to happen and to find a way to put the production on record in some way. That’s when we started thinking in terms of TV.

“Porgy and Bess” was written in 1935, and it deals with a group of poor African-Americans on Charleston’s Catfish Row. Did you find it stood up to the passage of time?

There was certainly this perception that it was an old warhorse with a slightly Uncle Tom-ish taint. Usually, Porgy, who is disabled, spends all night on his knees being pulled around in a goat cart. In this production he’s on crutches, which makes more dramatic sense to me.

We discovered this was an extraordinary naturalistic masterpiece. It has eight or nine characters who emerge very strongly, and whose lives influence each other very deeply.

The end of the opera sees Porgy telling us that love will not be vanquished and he will not be vanquished. He’s an emblematic figure who comes to represent the whole community. When he sings “I’m on my way,” the social and political significance of that cannot be accidental.

Gershwin was not a political animal. But DuBose Heyward (on whose story “Porgy and Bess” is based) was. He was writing about a community he genuinely loved, about a kind of social injustice and distress, and about how these people were capable of triumphing over their circumstances. They were indomitable. So yes, the work is still relevant to today.

Musically, it still sounds as strong.

Absolutely. How George Gershwin had such a strong understanding of black music, I don’t know. In “Porgy and Bess” he took black music, elevated it, created with it and its new tone of voice. It’s not pastiche or quotation--and yet only black people can sing it. It has no authenticity of musical definition when white people sing it.

The 1959 film of “Porgy and Bess,” with Sidney Poitier and Dorothy Dandridge, isn’t seem much today?

The Gershwin estate didn’t like it. Too Hollywood.

Are you happy with what you’ve achieved?

I’m thrilled beyond imagination. I didn’t believe we’d achieve anything of this quality, scale or ambition in the time we’ve had. The whole team we’ve put together has been sensational, and there have been very few occasions when we’ve said, ‘If we were on a different budget and timescale we’d go back and reshoot.’

Even so--16 days!

I know. It’s a very short shooting schedule. And as a result, what we’re doing is a hybrid. It’s less than a film. But then again, it’s more than TV.

“Porgy and Bess” airs Wednesday at 7 p.m. on KVCR and 8 p.m. on KCET and KPBS.