A revelatory history of the operatic masterpiece that both made and destroyed Rouben Mamoulian, its director and unsung hero.

Bring my goat! Porgy exclaims in the final scene of Gershwins opera Porgy and Bess. Bess, whom he loves, has left for New York City, and hes determined to find her. When his request is met with astonishmentNew York is a great distance from South Carolinas Catfish RowPorgy remains undaunted. He mounts his goat-cart and leads the community in an ecstatic finale, Oh Lawd, Im on my way.

Stephen Sondheim has called Bring my goat! one of the most moving moments in musical theater history. For years it was assumed that DuBose Heywardthe author of the seminal novella and subsequent play, Porgy, and later the librettist for the opera Porgy and Besspenned this historic line. In fact, both it and Oh Lawd, Im on my way were added to the play eight years earlier by that productions unheralded architect: Rouben Mamoulian. Porgy and Bess as we know it would not exist without the contributions of this master director.

Culling new information from the recently opened Mamoulian Archives at the Library of Congress, award-winning author Joseph Horowitz shows that, more than anyone else, Mamoulian took Heywards vignette of a regional African-American subculture and transformed it into an epic theater work, a universal parable of suffering and redemption. Part biography, part revelatory history, On My Way re-creates Mamoulians visionary style on stage and screen, his collaboration with George Gershwin, and the genesis of the opera that changed the face of American musical life.