Student Night at the Opera - Porgy and Bess

George Gershwin was inspired to write Porgy and Bess while on a working vacation. His interest in synthesizing jazz with classical music was infused with the music he heard in South Carolina. Initially a commercial failure, Porgy and Bess came to be considered one of the most important American operas of the twentieth century and an American cultural classic, even if critics could not quite figure out how to evaluate it or decide whether it was opera or simply an ambitious Broadway musical.