Cabbage Row News Today

Crafty travelers and social media hobbyists have put an old-school art form back on the map

George Gershwin’s opera Porgy and Bess requires a cast entirely comprised of African American singers. Initially, Gershwin had difficulty obtaining financing for the opera’s premiere because he refused Broadway producers’ requests that he use white singers in blackface. Based upon DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel Porgy, the opera takes place on Catfish Row, a waterside area in Charleston, South Carolina. And Gershwin and Heyward worked together on the opera on an island near Charleston. He...