The following sites will help you complete your Web lesson. Explore and bookmark them.

  • PORGY AND BESS
    http://www.best.com/~chapka/opera/gershwin/porgy/index.html
    A fairly thorough overview of the opera.

  • Great Performances: Creating America's Opera
    http://www.thirteen.org/gperf/feature8/html/body_behind.html
    More on PORGY AND BESS's origins and permutations. Look here for suggestions that imply the authors may have had a romanticized or patronizing view of African-Americans.

  • Goat Cart Sam a.k.a. Porgy: Edwin Dubose Heyward's Icon of Southern Innocence
    http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/PORGY/porgy.html
    A critical essay on Heyward's portrayal of the African-American denizens of Charleston's Catfish Row.

  • Porgy's Charleston
    http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/PORGY/chas.html
    Another article critical of the characterizations in Heyward's novel.

    • © 2011 Educational Broadcasting Corporation. All Rights Reserved.