|Peter Cox||July 11th 2012| South Africa’s Cape Town Opera
Company is showing that the story of oppression translates
across borders and time. The 1930s American musical Porgy and
Bess tells the story of oppressed black Americans struggling
with the pains of poverty in the 1930s. George Gerswhin wrote
the work as an American Folk Opera. But producers at the Cape
Town Opera company couldn’t help but hear familiar themes in the
piece. “I think Porgy and Bess has unique characteristics in its
musical score which really speak to our singers lives,”
explained Michael Williams, the director of the Cape Town Opera
company. “And so the singers on the stage can identify with a)
the community that Porgy and Bess is about b) the issues between
Sportin Life [a dope-peddling character in the musical] and his
community with regards to the drugs that are put in the
community - that is a major problem in South African townships,"
he added. "And also I think the violence that Crown [a tough
stevedore character] personifies in