★★★★☆
I had forgotten how religious Porgy and Bess is. There’s Robbins’s funeral near the start — 15 minutes of choral lamenting that must count as one of the great operatic threnodies — and several spiritual-style choruses later. Then comes the famously open-ended ending. The crippled Porgy is ostensibly off to find the errant Bess in New York, but what he actually sings is that he’s on his way to “the promised land”.
I mention this religious aspect first because by far the biggest thrills in this new English National Opera production are when the specially recruited chorus hurl out these gloriously sonorous affirmations of Christian faith. It’s like the best gospel choir you’ve ever heard, and it reminds you how brilliantly, in their 1935
