13,000 people packed the Mall in Washington, D.C. last weekend to watch a simulcast of Washington National Opera’s production of Porgy & Bess on a huge, 18-by-32 foot video screen. “When Angela Simpson sang Serena’s lament ‘My Man’s Gone Now,’ the applause was thunderous. And the cheers were repeated for almost every song from Indira Mahajan as Bess and Gordon Hawkins as Porgy. And for once, the cheers and the notes weren’t trapped by the chandeliers of the Opera House but floated off into the blue sky over the Mall.”