Some 40 artists from the Cape Town Opera Chorus of South Africa, iridescently attired, turned the Poly Theatre stage into Catfish Row, a fictional impoverished African American community in George Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, on Saturday and Sunday in Beijing, captivating the Chinese audience with their powerful singing and performances.

The two concerts, featuring the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, closed the 27th Beijing Music Festival. They marked the Chinese premiere of the new semi-staged version of the English-language opera. Co-produced by the festival, the Cape Town Opera, and the KT Wong Foundation, the production gathered talented international artists, including conductor Kazem Abdulla from the US and director Noa Naamat from Israel.

One of the most celebrated American operas of the 20th century, Porgy and Bess, was first performed in Boston in 1935 before it moved to Broadway in New York City. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play Porgy, which is an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel Porgy.

In the summer of 1934, Gershwin and Heyward stayed on an island near Charleston, South Carolina, where the opera was set, to immerse themselves in the African American setting that had inspired Heyward to create the novel. The ambiance was just right for Gershwin to finish the composition in just 11 months. His older brother, lyricist Ira Gershwin, and DuBose Heyward collaborated on the opera's libretto.

The opera tells the story of Porgy, a disabled beggar, and his attempt to save Bess from her possessive and violent lover, Crown, who abandons Bess after killing a man in a street fight. Love blossoms between Porgy and Bess, and when Porgy kills Crown and gets arrested, Bess resigns to accept a proposal from a drug dealer to go to New York. However, Porgy is acquitted. The opera closes with him leaving for the Big City, determined to find his Bess.

"On a dramatic level, I think what makes Porgy and Bess so unique is that Gershwin, together with his older brother, gave a vibrant, colorful human voice to this African American community in the early 1900s. They did a great job capturing the beautiful emotions and conflicts that these people must go through," said director Noa Naamat at a press conference on Oct 10 at the Divine Music Administration inside the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

"The opera is about how this beautiful community manages to rise above challenges, through prayer, through faith, and through coming together, managing to overcome all those things that have been thrown at them," she added.

Naamat argued that the themes of togetherness, never losing hope, and staying strong are universal and timeless. "For me, that's very important to bring to the audience in China because I think this is something on a human level that they can identify and connect with."

Naamat's semi-staged version of Porgy and Bess, in which actors dressed in modern clothing, gives Gershwin's almost century-old work a contemporary and fresh look.

However, the new production's use of a bare, stripped-down space poses a more significant challenge for the performers.

"We have done this production many times, but in this semi-staged version, it's even much tougher for us because it forces you as an artist to become the set and the prop. There is never a moment when you can switch off and let the set take center stage. You must constantly think on your feet and make sure that you get into the character (because that's) all that you've got," said soprano Nonhlanhla Yende, who plays the heroine Bess.

The director also placed the orchestra in the middle of the stage, highlighting music as the driving force of the opera because the characters, in her eyes, hold onto music through the ups and downs in their lives.

Conductor Kazem Abdulla said Porgy and Bess is a unique piece in the operatic repertoire from a musical perspective. It is a beautiful fusion of jazz, gospel, and blues with classical music.

"There is a reason why this opera is performed all over the world … It's really a kind of representation of what America is. You have an African American story, but you have this Jewish American composer, and he brings in these Western musical elements and creates a new kind of opera that was for the 20th century," Abdulla said.

The conductor expressed his enjoyment in working with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, which has participated in the festival for eight years.

"I have to say that the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra has so beautifully placed this work. I had a smile on my face for the first rehearsal. They've got all the jazz styles," said the conductor. "It's just amazing to see how the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra melds right with the Cape Town Opera as far as how they accompany and how they instinctively know what the opera is about and how the emotions of the opera have to transfer to the audience."

The Chinese premiere of the new semi-staged version of Porgy and Bess is a testament to the Beijing Music Festival's mission, which is "to introduce the finest productions in opera history from different cultural contexts to the Chinese audience," said Zou Shuang, the festival's artistic director.

Zou also pointed out that the collaboration with the Cape Town Opera, the only continuously active opera company in Africa, is the farthest-reaching partnership the festival has established in its 27 years.

The co-production is also a new fruit of the longstanding partnership between the KT Wong Foundation and the festival.

Notable collaborations between the two include the co-production of Handel's opera Semele in 2010 and Benjamin Britten's Noy's Fludde in 2012. The foundation supported the festival's co-productions of Wagner's Parsifal with the Salzburg Easter Festival in 2013 and of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Festival d'Aix-en-Provence in 2016.

"Bringing Porgy and Bess performed by the Cape Town Opera company to China has long been a dream of mine since 2017," said Lady Linda Wong Davies, founder and chairman of the foundation, which she established in memory of her late father, Dato Wong Kee Tat, a renowned Chinese-Malaysian businessman and philanthropist.

"I have had a home in South Africa for 31 years, and I have seen great changes occur in this country and how Cape Town Opera has evolved into what it is today, and I have always been so extraordinarily moved by the talent intrinsic in Africans," she said, noting that despite the importance of economic relationships between China and Africa, the rich and diverse contemporary art and cultural scenes of Africa remain relatively unknown to the Chinese public.

With a mission to provide cultural bridges between China and the world, in August, the foundation co-created Marvelous Realism, the largest contemporary African photography exhibition to date in Asia, with Fotografiska Shanghai.