Summertime, and the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high
Oh, your daddy's rich and your ma is good-lookin'
So hush little baby, don't you cry
One of these mornings, you're goin' to rise up singin'
And you'll spread your wings and you'll take the sky
But 'til that mornin', there's a-nothin' can harm you
With daddy and mommy standin' by
One of these mornings, you're goin' to rise up singin'
And you'll spread your wings and you'll take the sky
But 'til that mornin', there's a-nothin' can harm you
With daddy and mommy standin' by
"Written in 1934, 'Summertime' was one of the first compositions George Gershwin worked on for his brand-new opera Porgy and Bess. The jazz-inspired song is a lullaby for Clara to sing to her child, and it is reprised several more times throughout the opera."
"probably the most well-known and extraordinary of the pop versions of 'Summertime' is by Janis Joplin and her band, Big Brother and Holding Company."
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'In Greek mythology and religion,
Panacea
(Greek Πανάκεια, Panakeia), a goddess of universal remedy, was the daughter of Asclepius and Epione.
Panacea and her four sisters each performed a facet of Apollo's art:
"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panacea
Panacea (the goddess of universal health)
Hygieia ("Hygiene", the goddess/personification of health, cleanliness, and sanitation)
Iaso (the goddess of recuperation from illness)
Aceso (the goddess of the healing process)
Aegle (the goddess of radiant good health) "
"The term "panacea" has also come into figurative use as meaning "something used to solve all problems "
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"Porgy and Bess was first performed in Boston on September 30, 1935, before it moved to Broadway in New York City.]It featured a cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. A 1976 Houston Grand Opera production gained it a renewed popularity, and it is now one of the best known and most frequently performed operas.
The libretto of Porgy and Bess tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black street beggar living in the slums of Charleston.
It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin' Life, her drug dealer. The opera plot generally follows the stage play."
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"Porgy is a novel written by the American author DuBose Heyward and published by the George H. Doran Company in 1925.
The novel tells the story of Porgy, a crippled street beggar living in the black tenements of Charleston, South Carolina, in the 1920s. The character was based on Charlestonian Samuel Smalls.
In some of the novel's passages, black characters speak in Gullah, a creole language that had developed among enslaved African Americans during the slavery years on the Sea Islands.
The novel was adapted for a 1927 play of the same name by Heyward and his wife, playwright Dorothy Heyward.
Even before completing the play, Heyward was in discussions with composer George Gershwin for an operatic version of his novel. This was produced in 1935 as Porgy and Bess (renamed to distinguish it from the play"
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"The belief that Porgy and Bess was racist gained strength during the civil rights movement and Black Power movement of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. As these movements advanced, Porgy and Bess was seen as more and more out of date. When the play was revived in the 1960s, social critic and African-American educator Harold Cruse called it, "The most incongruous, contradictory cultural symbol ever created in the Western World"
"Gershwin's all-black opera was also unpopular with some celebrated black artists. Harry Belafonte declined to play Porgy in the late 1950s film version, so the role went to Sidney Poitier.
Poitier found the opera insulting and only took on the film role due to coercion from producer Samuel Goldwyn. Betty Allen, president of The Harlem School of the Arts, admittedly loathed the piece, and Grace Bumbry, who excelled in the 1985 Metropolitan Opera production as Bess, made the often cited statement:
My way of dealing with it was to see that it was really a piece of Americana, of American history, whether we liked it or not.
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