Gershwin's folk opera Porgy and Bess climaxed his brief but spectacular career as both a popular and serious composer. He had read DuBose Heyward's novel Porgy in 1926 and was immediately interested in transforming it into an opera, but it was almost eight years before arrangements were completed for Gershwin to begin writing the music. It was first performed by the Theatre Guild in Boston and New York in 1935 by an all-Negro cast. The opera ran for 124 performances, a flop by Broadway standards. It was revived in 1942, almost five years after Gershwin's death, and the show had the longest run of any revival in Broadway musical history. This arrangement by Robert Russell Bennett includes: Summertime, A Woman Is a Sometime Thing, I Got Plenty o' Nuttin', Bess, You Is My Woman, It Ain't Nece