Once in a while, if singers can be found who can handle spoken dialogue, an opera company will tackle a Candide or a Little Night Music, but the sole work that really lives in both the Broadway and operatic worlds is Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. (“Summertime,” it’s claimed, is the most-recorded song ever, captivating musicians from Jascha Heifetz to Janis Joplin.) Its performance history, consequently, is highly complicated, and it’s a shame Seattle Opera couldn’t have accompanied its upcoming run with a symposium like the ones they throw for their quadrennial Rings. The issues the show raises are ripe for discussion–not only its hybrid identity but the charges of racism leveled at the show since its 1935 premiere and the racial politics of opera itself: In an age when no one would dare balk at an Asian Almaviva or a black Butterfly, is casting non-blacks in Porgy and Bess still unthinkable (even if the Gershwin estate allowed it)? Familiar SO faces Lisa Daltirus and Gordon Hawkins take the title roles; I’m also eager for the return of Mary Elizabeth Williams (here singing Serena), whose powerful Donna Elvira in a Young Artists Program Don Giovanni a decade ago is still vivid in my mind. GAVIN BORCHERT

Sat., July 30, 6:30 p.m.; Wed., Aug. 3, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 6, 7:30 p.m.; Wed., Aug. 10, 7:30 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 12, 7:30 p.m.; Sun., Aug. 14, 2 p.m.; Fri., Aug. 19, 7:30 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 20, 7:30 p.m., 2011