Portraits and Observations (14 page)

Mrs. Breen asked if I were looking forward to boarding The Blue Express, and was exaggeratedly pleased to hear that I was. “Oh, Robert and I wouldn’t miss this train ride for the world! Everybody in the cast is so darling. I know it’s going to be the kind of fun you’ll never stop talking about. But,” she said, with a sudden sorrow in her voice that sounded not altogether sincere, “Robert and I have decided to go by plane. Of course we’ll see you off at the station here—and be right there on the platform when you pull into Leningrad. At least I
hope
we will. Only I can’t believe it. That it’s really going to happen.” She paused; for an instant a frown marred her
immaculate enthusiasm. “Someday I’ll tell you the real story behind it all. The people who didn’t want this to happen! Oh, we’ve had such blows.” She struck her breast. “Real body blows. And they’re still coming. Right up to the last minute,” she said, glancing at a sheaf of cables on a desk.

A few of the Breens’ tribulations were already common knowledge. For instance, it seemed an accepted fact, in the rumor and publicity surrounding the Soviet venture, that the Russians had, on their own initiative, and out of a Geneva-spirit impulse, invited
Porgy and Bess
to tour their country. The truth of the matter is, Everyman Opera had invited itself. Breen, having long considered a trip to Russia the logical extension of his company’s “good will” travels, sat down and wrote a letter to the Soviet Premier, Marshal Bulganin, saying, in effect, that
Porgy and Bess
would be pleased to undertake the journey if the U.S.S.R. was willing to have them. The appeal must have impressed Bulganin favorably, for he forwarded the letter to the Ministry of Culture, the government monopoly which, under the direction of Nikolai Mikhailov, controls every facet of artistic life inside the Soviet Union. Theater, music, films, publishing, painting, each of these activities comes under the specific, not always lenient, supervision of the Ministry of Culture, whose headquarters are in Moscow. Therefore, with the implied blessings of Bulganin, the Ministry began negotiations with Everyman Opera, though to do so could not have been a casual decision. Casual, say, as the decisions might have been in the case of the Comédie Française, whose company had appeared in Moscow a year earlier, or a British production of
Hamlet
, which had been given a Moscow première in the autumn of 1955. Both of these troupes had enjoyed wholehearted success. But from any point of view, whether that of the visiting artists or their hosts, the risks involved were merely aesthetic. Molière and Shakespeare do not lend themselves to the intentions of modern political propaganda.

The same cannot be said of
Porgy and Bess
. Here, either side of the curtain, American or Soviet, had much to concern them, for the Gershwin opera, when slipped under the dialectical microscope, proves a test tube brimming with the kind of bacteria to which the present Russian regime is most allergic. It is extremely erotic, a serious cause for dismay in a nation with laws so prim, persons can be arrested for kissing in public. It is God-fearing; over and again it stresses the necessity of faith in a world above the stars rather than below, demonstrates in song and dialogue the comforts to be derived from religious belief (“the opium of the people”). Furthermore, it discourses, in an uncritical vein, on the subject of superstition, i.e., “The Buzzard Song.” As if this weren’t anathema enough, it also sings out loud that people can be happy with plenty of nothin’, an unwelcome message indeed.

Certainly the Ministry of Culture must have taken these drawbacks into account, and then reflected that, though the pill was definitely there, at least it was sugar-coated. After all, and despite its accent on folkish fun, the situation of the American Negro as depicted in
Porgy and Bess
, an exploited race at the mercy of ruthless Southern whites, poverty-pinched and segregated in the ghetto of Catfish Row, could not be more agreeably imagined if the Ministry of Culture had assigned one of their own writers to the job. And so, midsummer of 1955, the Ministry informed Everyman Opera they were prepared to roll out the red carpet.

Assured of a welcome in Russia, Breen then faced the problem of getting there, and that required money, an estimated $150,000. The first newspaper announcements of the Russian “invitation” to
Porgy and Bess
more or less suggested that the American State Department would not only be the spiritual heart of this “unprecedented project,” as Breen occasionally called it, but would also provide its financial backbone. Breen believed so, and with good reason. Over the last several years the State Department had
received universal praise for its moral and financial sponsoring of
Porgy and Bess
, which
The New York Times
, among others, frequently summarized as the “best ambassador” the State Department had ever sent abroad. But Breen soon discovered, after a series of pleading trips to Washington, that he could no longer rely on the patronage of his Potomac friends. Apparently they thought his project too unprecedented, or, in their own phrase, “politically premature.” In other words, not one cent.

In New York, theatrical circles theorized that the State Department had withdrawn its support because they feared the opera too vulnerable to the purposes of Soviet propaganda. Defenders of the enterprise considered this attitude nonsensical. In their opinion, the fact that such social-critical aspects as the opera contained could be freely presented in the American theater counteracted the possibilities of effective propaganda on that score. A further argument was that in Russia the very presence of the Negro cast, their affluent appearance, their so obviously unoppressed outspokenness, their educated, even worldly manner (“Why,” said Mrs. Breen, “some of our cast speak three and four languages. Perfectly”) would impress on the Russian people a different image of the American Negro from the stereotype that continues to make Harriet Beecher Stowe one of the Soviet’s best-selling authors.

Variety
, the theatrical trade paper, reported as rumor a more straightforward explanation for the State Department’s reversal. According to them, the International Exchange Program, a branch of the American National Theater and Academy (ANTA), whose advice on theatrical matters carries great weight in Washington, had registered opposition on the grounds that the State Department had already spent enough money on
Porgy and Bess
, and that the funds at their disposal should be more evenly spread to allow a larger catalogue of events in cultural exchange.

Nonetheless, ANTA and the State Department wished Everyman Opera the best of luck. They were not disowning, simply disinheriting. But well-wishers added little to Breen’s bank account, and as he pondered the possibilities of raising the needed amount of private subscription, there was an unexpected development. The Russians stepped forward and offered to pick up the tab themselves. While the feeblest linguist could translate the meaning of this gesture, designed, as it was, to embarrass the State Department, American partisans of Breen’s venture welcomed it for the very reason it was offered. They felt it would shame Washington into taking a less miserly position. They were mistaken.

Consequently, with time growing short, Breen had the choice of abandoning his plan or permitting the Soviet to capitalize it. A contract, dated December 3, 1955, was drawn up in Moscow between the Ministry of Culture of the U.S.S.R. (“designated hereinafter under the name of the ‘Ministry’ ”) and Everyman Opera, Inc. (“hereinafter under the name of the ‘Company’ ”). The contract consists of three and a half closely typed pages, and contains several quaint items—the Ministry agrees to supply a Russian member of the cast, namely, “one domesticated she-goat.” But the burden of it is set forth in Article 5. When the writhings of language in this long clause are disentangled, it emerges that during their stay in the Soviet Union, the company would receive weekly payments of $16,000, a figure quite below their customary fee, especially so since the payments were to be made half “in U. S. Dollars in a bank check in New York, the remainder in cash Rubles at the official rate.” (As everyone knows, the official rate is an arbitrary four rubles to the dollar. Opinion wavers on what a fair exchange would be, but on the Moscow black market it is possible to get ten to one, and if a person were willing to take a chance on transporting currency out of the country, thereby risking Siberian detention, he
could obtain in Switzerland only one dollar for every fifteen rubles.) In addition to these monetary agreements, Article 5 also promised that the Ministry would supply the Company with: “Free lodging and food in first-class hotels or, when traveling, with sleeper accommodations and food in a dining car. Furthermore, it is understood and agreed that the Ministry pay all expenses for traveling of all members of the Company and the transportation of its scenic equipment to and through the Soviet Union and back to a European border of the Soviet Union.”

All told, the Russians were investing approximately $150,000. This should not be construed as cultural philanthropy. Actually, for them it was a sound business proposition. If every performance sold out, as was almost certain to happen, the Ministry would double its investment, that is, have a total box-office gross the equivalent of $300,000. Whereas, on the basis of the Ministry-Company contract, and by applying the laws of income versus operating cost, it could be calculated that Everyman Opera would lose around $4,000 a week. Presumably Breen had devised a formula for sustaining such a loss. “But don’t ask
me
what it is, darling,” said Mrs. Gershwin. “It’s an absolute mystery.”

While Mrs. Breen was still on the theme of “body blows,” her husband returned from the studio where he’d been rehearsing the cast after the diplomatic briefing. She asked him if he’d like a drink. He said he would, very much. Straight brandy, please.

Breen is around forty-five, a man of medium height. He has an excellent figure, and one is kept aware of it by the fit of his clothes, for he is partial to trim Eisenhower jackets and those close-cut, narrow-legged trousers known as frontier pants. He wears custom-made shirts, preferably in the colors black and purple. He has thinning blond hair and is seldom indoors or out without a black beret. Depending on the expression, whether solemn or smiling, his face,
pale and with a smoothly gaunt bone structure, suggests altogether opposite personalities. In the solemn moments, which can last hours, his face presents a mask of brooding aloofness, as though he were posing for a photographer who had warned him not to move a muscle. Inevitably, one is reminded that Breen, like his wife, has acted Shakespeare—and that the part was Hamlet, which he played in a production that, soon after the war, toured Europe and was even staged at Elsinore itself. But when Breen relaxes, or when something succeeds in catching his interest, he has a complete physical altering in the direction of extreme liveliness and boyish grinning good humor. A shyness, a vulnerable, gullible look replaces the remote and seeming self-assurance. The dual nature of Breen’s appearance may explain why an Everyman Opera employee could complain in one breath, “You never know where you stand with Mr. Breen,” and say in the next, “Anybody can take advantage of him. He’s just too kind.”

Breen took a swallow of brandy and beckoned me into the bathroom, where he wanted to demonstrate how one of the toy boats operated. It was a tin canoe with a windup Indian that paddled. “Isn’t that wonderful?” he said, as the Indian paddled back and forth across the tub. “Did you ever see anything like that?” He has an actor’s trained voice, “placed” in a register so very deep that it makes for automatic pomposity, and as he speaks his manicured hands move with his words, not in an excitable, Latin style, but in a gracefully slow ritualistic manner, rather as though he were saying Mass. Indeed, Breen’s earliest ambitions
were
ecclesiastical. Before his interest turned toward the stage, he spent a year training to become a priest.

I asked him how the rehearsal had gone. “Well, it’s a good cast,” he said. “But they’re a little spoiled, they take it too much for granted. Curtain calls and ovations. Rave reviews. I keep telling
them I want them to understand going to Russia isn’t just another engagement. We’ve got to be the best we’ve ever been.”

If Breen expected the wish contained in this last sentence to come true, then, in the estimation of some observers, he had his work cut out for him. In 1952, when Breen and his co-producer, Blevins Davis, revived the Gershwin opera, which had been a box-office and somewhat of a critical failure in its original (1935) Theater Guild presentation, the program listed William Warfield as Porgy, Leontyne Price as Bess, and Cab Calloway in the role of Sportin’ Life. Since then, these stars had been replaced, and even their replacements replaced, not always with artists of comparable quality. It is difficult to maintain a high level in performance of any long-run production, especially if the show is on tour. The strain of overnight hops, the dreamlike flow of rooms and restaurants, the electric emotional climate surrounding groups who continuously live and work together are factors which create an accumulative fatigue that the show often reflects. Horst Kuegler, a Berlin theater critic who, when he’d reviewed
Porgy and Bess
three years earlier (it was then appearing in Germany as part of the Berlin Music Festival), had been so enthusiastic he’d gone to see it five times, now felt, seeing it again, that it was “still full of energy and charm, though the production has deteriorated greatly.” For the past week, Breen had rehearsed his cast to the limit Actors Equity permits; but whether or not the show could be whipped into prime shape, Breen had no qualms about its reception at the Leningrad première. It was going to be a “bombshell”! The Russians would be “stunned”! And, what was an unarguable prediction, “They’ll never have seen anything like it!”

As Breen was finishing his brandy, his wife called from the next room, “You’d better get ready, Robert. They’ll be here at six, and I’ve reserved a private dining room.”