They won’t forget.”
The promise of these young people who wouldn’t forget, who’d been stimulated into new visions: surely, I thought, that was enough to justify my telling Henry Shapiro the première was a success. Not the “bombshell” conquest the proprietors of Everyman Opera had expected; but a victory of finer significance, one that would mature and matter. And yet, as I lay in my room thinking it over, qualms seized me when eventually the telephone rang. “How did it go? What really happened?” were questions to be answered on journalism’s unsubtle level. Could I, with any honesty, give Shapiro a radiant account of the opera’s overall reception?
I preferred to; and suspected that it was what he, quite naturally, wanted to hear. But I let the telephone ring while a plethora of ifs plunged around in my head: if the Russians had been able to consult a printed program, if the fanfare and ceremonial aspects had been curtailed, if less had been demanded of the audience, if … I quit stalling and picked up the receiver. But the person on the line was Miss Lydia, who said she was sorry, someone had called me from Moscow and been disconnected. I had no more calls that evening.
Reviews of the production were published by two of the city’s leading papers, Smena and Evening Leningrad. In Ambassador Bohlen’s opinion, the articles were “By and large, really excellent. Very thoughtful. It shows they took it seriously.”
The Evening Leningrad critic wrote, “Porgy and Bess is a work stamped with brilliant talent and unusual mastery … warmly received by the audience.” A further fifteen hundred words elaborated on that statement. He praised the score (“Gershwin’s music is melodic, sincere, intentionally suffused with Negro musical folklore. There are plenty of really expressive and contrasting melodies”), Breen’s direction (“The show is directed with great mastery and rivets one’s attention with its dynamic sweep”), the conductor (“The musical part of the performance is on a very high level”), and the cast (“… plays together with a harmony rarely to be seen …”).
The libretto, however, provoked a gentle reprimand, for the writer noticed in it “some elements of expressionism and melodrama, and abundance of the customary details regarding criminal investigation.” Nor did Evening Leningrad forget to press the political pedal: “We, Soviet spectators, realize the corrosive effect of the capitalistic system on the consciousness, the mentality and the moral outlook of a people oppressed by poverty. This lifts Heyward’s play, as set to music by Gershwin, into the realms of social drama.” But such comments seemed a mere pianissimo compared to the loud chords of propaganda that opponents of the Porgy and Bess tour had anticipated.
The second critic, U. Kovalyev, writing in Smena, mentioned a factor ignored by Evening Leningrad: “The astoundingly erotic coloring of some of the dancing scenes is unpleasant. And it is hard to lay the blame on a specific national dance. It is more the taste of the director and perhaps his kind of ‘tradition’ stemming from Broadway ‘burlesques’ and ‘revues.’ But on the whole,” continues Kovalyev, “Porgy and Bess presents one of the most interesting events of this theatrical season. It is an excellently performed production, colorful, full of movement and music. It testifies to the high talent of the Negro people.
Very possibly not all of the music and the staging will be approved by the Soviet audiences and everything will not necessarily be understandable to them. We are not used to the naturalistic details in the dance, to the excessive jazz sound of the symphony orchestra, etc. Nevertheless the performance broadens our concept of the art of contemporary America, and familiarizes us with thus far unknown facets of the musical and theatrical life of the United States.”
These reviews did not appear until Thursday, three days after the opening. By then, their publication was rather an anticlimax and the company was inclined to regard them with a yawn. “Sure it’s nice they write okay things, but who cares?” said one member of the cast, expressing a prevalent attitude. “It’s not what the Russians think. It’s the stuff they’re hearing about us back home. That’s what counts.”
The company was already aware of what America was hearing, for late Tuesday afternoon, the day following the première, Breen received a cable on the subject from Everyman Opera’s New York office. Miss Ryan typed copies of it, and she was about to put one of them on the company’s bulletin board when we met in the lobby. “Hi,” she said. “Guess what? Stefan the Bunny called. He wants to take me dancing. Do you think it’ll be all right? I mean, as long as he just wants to dance? Anyway, I don’t care. I’d go dancing with Jack the Ripper, anything to get away from Porgy and Bess,” she said, and thumbtacked her typewritten version of the cable to the bulletin board.
LT ROBERT BREEN HOTEL ASTORIA LENINGRAD USSR
WONDERFUL ARTICLES HERE ALL DECEMBER 27 PAPERS STOP ALL MENTION TEN MINUTES STANDING OVATION STOP
JOURNALS HEADLINE—“LENINGRAD GOES WILD OVER PORGY AND BESS” STOP
AP FACTUAL RELEASE INCLUDES GREAT TICKET DEMAND AND SIZE AUDIENCE STOP
TRIBUNE STRESSES WARM AUDIENCE RECEPTION STOP
TELEGRAM HEADLINE—“PORGY WINS PRAISE FROM RUSSIA” OVER AP RELEASE STOP
MIRROR EDITORIAL “HEART TO HEART DIPLOMACY—CAST TAKING LENINGRAD BY SONG WE ARE PROUD OF THEM” STOP
AP RELEASE IN SOME PAPERS SAYS MOSCOW RADIO TERMED PREMIÈRE GREAT SUCCESS STOP
TIMES EDITORIAL TODAY BY SULZBERGER “PORGY BESS OPENING ANOTHER WINDOW TO WEST”
JOURNAL EDITORIAL TODAY—“MADE TREMENDOUS HIT”
NBC CBS NEWSCASTS FABULOUS
CONGRATULATIONS TO EVERY SINGLE SOUL WITH YOU
“Of course,” remarked Miss Ryan, perusing the cable, “that’s not exactly how it arrived. The Breens did a little adding and editing. There was one line: ‘Times says scored moderate success.’ You can bet Wilva cut that out! Well,” she said with a smile, a sigh, “why not make a good thing better? Wilva just wants everybody to feel wonderful, and I think that’s kind of endearing.”
All afternoon members of the company, passing through the lobby, stopped to read the message from New York. It made them grin; they walked away with lightened steps. “What’cha say, man?” said Earl Bruce Jackson to Warner Watson as they stood reading the cable. “We’re making history!” And Watson, rubbing his hands together, replied, “Yep, uh-huh. I guess we’ve got history fenced in.”
1956
The End
