{"id":25415,"date":"2012-09-16T04:10:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-16T04:10:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25415"},"modified":"2012-09-16T23:34:50","modified_gmt":"2012-09-16T23:34:50","slug":"anne-brown-soprano-who-was-gershwin%e2%80%99s-bess-is-dead-at-96","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25415","title":{"rendered":"Anne Brown, Soprano Who Was Gershwin\u2019s Bess, Is Dead at 96"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/17\/arts\/music\/17brown.html\" target=\"_blank\">Anne Brown, Soprano Who Was Gershwin\u2019s Bess, Is Dead at 96<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\" target=\"_blank\">The New York Times<\/a><br \/>\n2009-03-16<\/p>\n<p><strong>Douglas Martin<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anne_Brown\" target=\"_blank\">Anne Brown<\/a>, a penetratingly pure soprano who literally put the Bess in \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Porgy_and_Bess\" target=\"_blank\">Porgy and Bess<\/a>\u201d by inspiring <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/George_Gershwin\" target=\"_blank\">George Gershwin<\/a> to expand the character\u2019s part in a folk opera that was originally to be called \u201cPorgy,\u201d died Friday in Oslo. She was 96.<\/p>\n<p>Her daughter Paula Schjelderup announced the death.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cPorgy and Bess\u201d burst onto the American scene in 1935 as a sophisticated musical treatment of poor blacks. Critics could not make out whether it was a musical comedy, a jazz drama, a folk opera or something quite different. Time told: it became part of the standard operatic repertory, including that of the Metropolitan Opera.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing from the gritty experiences of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/South_Carolina\" target=\"_blank\">South Carolina<\/a> blacks, \u201cPorgy and Bess\u201d introduced songs that came to be lodged in American culture. Ms. Brown was the first person Gershwin heard singing the part of Bess, a morally challenged but achingly human character who was relatively minor in the original 1925 <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/DuBose_Heyward\" target=\"_blank\">DuBose Heyward<\/a> novel and the 1927 hit stage play by DuBose and Dorothy Heyward.<\/p>\n<p>As he composed the opera, often with Ms. Brown at his side, Gershwin added more and more music for her. Her voice was also the first he heard singing several other parts in the opera&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire obituary <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/17\/arts\/music\/17brown.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Anne Brown, Soprano Who Was Gershwin\u2019s Bess, Is Dead at 96 The New York Times 2009-03-16 Douglas Martin Anne Brown, a penetratingly pure soprano who literally put the Bess in \u201cPorgy and Bess\u201d by inspiring George Gershwin to expand the character\u2019s part in a folk opera that was originally to be called \u201cPorgy,\u201d died Friday [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,24,1245],"tags":[11877,11876,11881,11880,1392,2640,2327],"class_list":["post-25415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-arts","category-biography","tag-anne-brown","tag-anne-wiggins-brown","tag-douglas-martin","tag-george-gershwin","tag-music","tag-new-york-times","tag-the-new-york-times"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25415\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}