Cape Town Opera, which claims a place—no doubt richly deserved—among South Africa’s leading performing-arts institutions, has announced a potentially historic whirlwind tour of Europe. Back in the day when Russian or English or Finnish companies undertook such campaigns, they would typically foreground home-grown titles: Khovanshchina, The Last Temptations, Gloriana. But no, we’re talking a concert staging of George Gershwin’s global hit Porgy and Bess, uniquely situated in a No Man’s Land between grand opera, folk opera, and Broadway-style American musical. And something about the package feels ever-so-slightly more Catholic than the pope. The cast, surprise!, is all-Black, just as Gershwin wanted it to be. In point of fact, the stricture excludes a cartoonish handful of Jim Crow speaking parts. More importantly, it applied only to staged productions in the United States. No one objected when the legendary (white) American baritone Lawrence Tibbett recorded Porgy’s greatest numbers, and there were those who regarded him (and still do) as the greatest Porgy of them all. But why on earth wouldn’t an African company cast Africans as Gershwin’s African-Americans? Regarding the orchestra, Gershwin made no such demands. Going him one better, the Cape Town company’s instrumentalists for the tour are London’s crackerjack Chineke! Orchestra, which is Europe’s first-ever (and perhaps still only) Black and ethnically diverse professional symphonic ensemble. But apparently, no satisfactory Black conductor could be found, which left the podium free for Enrique Mazzola, who trained in Milan, But honestly, isn’t all the identity-political bean-counting beside the point? In recent decades, South Africa has sent the world a remarkable multiracial cohort of opera stars specializing in everything from bel canto to Wagner, among them Johan Botha, Elza van den Heever, Pretty Yende, Vuvu Mpofu, and Siyabongo Maqungo. Here’s hoping the Cape Town Porgy and Bess proves a springboard for new voices of international calibre. At home, these gigs at the Cité de la Musique in Paris, the Lucerne Culture and Congress Centre, the Berlin Musikfest, DE SINGEL in Antwerp, and the Konzerthaus Dortmund are sure to generate lots of box-office heat for Cape Town Opera’s coming productions of Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Oliver! The Musical. What might they take on the road next time? —Matthew Gurewitsch