Porgy in Moscow

Leningrad cheered Porgy and Bess (TIME, Jan. 9), but nobody could predict how Moscow, with its love of grand opera in the grand manner, would take to the jazzy American folk opera about crapshooters along Catfish Row. By opening night last week, it was plain that Muscovites were at least curious to see the first U.S. theatrical troupe ever to visit Russia. Tens of thousands had applied for seats. Immense crowds swarmed around the Stanislavsky Theater hoping to get a spare ticket. A lucky 1,500 Soviet bigwigs, foreign diplomats and Russian first-nighters crammed into the theater to see an all-Negro cast do the show of the '30s.

By evening's end, it was plain that Porgy was effectively spreading good will for the U.S. Thirteen times during the opera about life on the waterfront in Charleston, S.C., the Russian audience burst into frenzied applause. As the lights went up, many in the audience had tear-stained faces. Shouting and stamping their feet, the crowd gave the cast an 8 1/2-minute ovation. The second night the nation's top leaders--Khrushchev, Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich, Mikoyan--were on hand, staying through a couple of curtain calls and applauding vigorously. Gasped the artistic director of Moscow's Mayakovsky Theater: "What a tempo! What rhythm!"

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