![]() ![]() The song was recorded for the first time by Abbie Mitchell on July 19, 1935, with George Gershwin playing the piano and conducting the orchestra (on: George Gershwin Conducts Excerpts from Porgy & Bess, Mark 56 667). ![]() The song theme is reprised soon after as counterpoint to the craps game scene, in act 2 in a reprise by Clara, and in act 3 by Bess, singing to Clara's now-orphaned baby after both parents died in the storm. Its lyrics are the first words heard in act 1 of the opera, following the communal "wa-do-wa". The song is sung several times throughout Porgy and Bess. Gershwin had completed setting DuBose Heyward's poem to music by February 1934, and spent the next 20 months completing and orchestrating the score of the opera. Gershwin began composing the song in December 1933, attempting to create his own spiritual in the style of the African American folk music of the period. Composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim characterized Heyward's lyrics for "Summertime" and " My Man's Gone Now" as "the best lyrics in the musical theater". Gershwin's highly evocative writing brilliantly mixes elements of jazz and the song styles of blacks in the southeast United States from the early twentieth century". one of the finest songs the composer ever wrote . ![]() The song soon became a popular and much-recorded jazz standard, described as "without doubt . The lyrics are by DuBose Heyward, the author of the novel Porgy on which the opera was based, and Ira Gershwin. " Summertime" is an aria composed in 1934 by George Gershwin for the 1935 opera Porgy and Bess. Aria from the opera Porgy and Bess "Summertime" ![]()
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