Portraits and Observations (28 page)

And it was very long. The curtain, announced for eight, went up at nine-five and came down at eleven-forty. By midnight I was back at
the Astoria waiting for a call from Henry Shapiro, the UP correspondent in Moscow, who’d said he would telephone me after the première to find out “how it went. What really happened.” There is no absolute truth in these matters, only opinion, and as I attempted to formulate my own, tried to decide what I was going to tell Shapiro, I stretched on the bed and switched out the light. My eyes smarted from the recent glare of flash bulbs, I seemed still to hear the soft clickety noise of newsreel cameras. And indeed, lying in the dark, it was as though a film were rushing through my head, a disconnected rampage of pictures: Martha Flowers tripping to the footlights to throw the audience a kiss, Savchenko striding through the lobby listening for comments, the terror in Sascha’s eyes, Miss Ryan covering her face with her hands. I made a conscious effort to slow the film down, let it start at the beginning.

It began with the audience, an army standing at solemn attention while the orchestra played the national anthems of the two countries: Savchenko had courteously insisted that “The Star-Spangled Banner” should be heard first. Then individual faces came into focus: Ambassador and Mrs. Bohlen, the Sulzbergers, the Lowrys, Miss Ryan and Leonard Lyons, all together in a front row. Near them, on a platform extending from the side of the stage, a squadron of photographers waited impatiently until the anthems ended: then the platform resembled a besieged fortress, photographers firing away while assistants reloaded their cameras. Some, like CBS’s Dan Schorr, desperately alternated between cameras and tape recorders as they went to work documenting the precurtain ceremonies. There was no need for such haste. The speeches, and their translations, lasted an hour.

The Russians were brief enough. Konstantin Sergeev, the dapper young ballet master of the Leningrad Theater, shook hands with Breen and, speaking into a microphone, said, “Dear Brothers in art, welcome. We in the Soviet Union have always paid attention and
tribute to the art of the United States. We know and cherish the works of such fine artists as Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jack London and Paul Robeson. We appreciate the talents of George Gershwin, and that is why this meeting is so joyous.” Afterward, apropos of this speech, Mrs. Gershwin said, “I thought I’d faint when I heard the name Gershwin being lumped in with all those Communists.”

Breen bowed to Sergeev, and stepped up to the microphone, a preening, impeccable figure in his trim tuxedo and starched shirt. “He just lost his nerve,” said Miss Ryan, explaining why at the last minute her employer had abandoned the idea of wearing white tie and tails. But now, watching Breen react to the applause that greeted him, one wouldn’t have guessed there was a nerve in his system. His smooth blond face, bleached by the strong lights and exploding flash bulbs, possessed an inward-gazing remoteness, as though he had for so long dreamed the scene before him that it was still a dream; and when he spoke, the measured, sepulchral timbre of his actor’s voice strengthened the impression that he thought himself alone on an empty stage addressing an imaginary audience, practicing, as it were, for an ego-satisfying moment that would someday come true. Imaginary audiences are notoriously submissive; but the Palace of Culture assemblage began to grow talkative themselves as Breen rambled on, the Russian translator trailing behind him. With graceful,
grand seigneur
sweepings of the hand, he introduced Ambassador and Mrs. Bohlen, who rose in their seats to acknowledge applause. The Ambassador had been expected to deliver a speech, but much to Bohlen’s relief, and Breen’s regret, the Soviets, extremely sensitive to protocol, had asked that this part of the program be deleted because they had no one of “comparable eminence” to make, on the Russian behalf, a rejoinder. Mrs. Gershwin was also introduced, and the conductor, Alexander Smallens, who received a sumptuous
hand when Breen announced that Smallens was “born right here in Leningrad.” The introductions continued as Breen presented members of the cast who were not performing that evening: Ethel Ayler, the alternate Bess, sufficiently recovered from her cold to have climbed out of bed and into a skimpy, strapless blue gown. And Lorenzo Fuller, the alternate Sportin’ Life. Fuller had a “few” words to say, among them a Russian phrase he’d memorized,
“Dobro poshlavat, druzya,”
which means “Welcome, friends.” The audience roared approval. But as clock hands crept toward nine, even the frenzied photographers paused to consult watches. “Jesus,” said one correspondent, “they ought to have a gong around here. Like Major Bowes.” It was as though Breen had overheard him, for abruptly the ceremonial group vacated the stage.

The theater grew quieter than a hens’ roost at sunset as the audience settled back, confident that now the curtain would rise and reveal what they’d paid their rubles to see,
Porgy and Bess
. Instead, Sascha appeared. He crossed the stage stiff-legged and wobbly, as though he were walking a plank. A sheaf of typewritten pages quivered in his hands, and his face, bloodlessly pallid, was drenched with sweat. The instant the audience caught wind of why he was there, to read them the opera’s plot, the hens’ roost turned into a hornets’ nest. They couldn’t tolerate another syllable
about
the show, they simply wanted to see it; and a mutiny that broke out in the balcony, where rude voices started shouting, spread to the orchestra: the patrons clapped, whistled, stamped their feet. “Poor Sascha, oh, poor boy,” said Miss Ryan, covering her face with her hands. “It’s too terrible. I can’t bear to watch.” Several rows back of Miss Ryan, Sascha’s two friends, Igor and Henry, slumped on their spines, but Miss Lydia, less squeamish, glared round at her
neighbors, as though she’d like to crack them with her pocketbook. On stage, Sascha went on reading, mumbling, as if he were whispering a prayer against the deafening tumult; like Breen before him, he seemed locked in a dream, a numbing, naked-in-the-street nightmare. Smallens flicked his baton, and the overture sounded as Sascha retreated into the wings.

It was soon evident that the audience regretted not having paid more attention to Sascha’s résumé of the two-act tale the opera tells. In skeleton, the story is this: a crippled beggar, Porgy, falls in love with a Charleston tart, Bess. Alas, this neurotic young woman is under the wicked influence of two other gentlemen. One, a devilish dope peddler, Sportin’ Life, has enticed her into drug addiction, while the second, an alluringly muscular criminal named Crown, monopolizes the heroine’s libidinous impulses. Porgy dispenses of the latter rival by killing him, and when he is sent to jail for the deed, Bess alleviates her woes by going on a dope binge, during which Sportin’ Life persuades her to forget Porgy and traipse off with him to New York: “That’s where we belong, sister” he sings as they head for the sugary lights of Harlem. In the last scene, Porgy, acquitted of Crown’s murder, sets out for the North in a goat-drawn cart, believing, and leaving the spectator to believe, that he will find Bess and bring her home. Although this narrative line seems straight as a ruler, the intricate vocal-choreographic terms in which it is developed would confuse any audience where the language barrier is present, particularly if the music, the style of dancing, the directorial approach are each and all virgin territory, as they were to the overwhelming majority of those assembled in the Palace of Culture.

“Summertime” ended, and there was no applause. The entrance of Porgy went unheralded. Leslie Scott, playing the part, finished “A Woman Is a Sometimes Thing,” and paused for the acclaim the number ordinarily arouses. The fact that none came caused a temporary
lapse of stage action. Recovering, the cast launched into a jazzy crap-game sequence: whispering ran through the audience, as though they were asking each other what it meant, these excited men tossing dice? The whispering gathered momentum and turned into gasps, a tremor of shock, when Bess, making her initial appearance, hiked up her skirt to adjust her garter. Miss Ryan observed to Mrs. Lowry, “If they think
that’s
so daring, just wait.” The words weren’t out of her mouth before Sportin’ Life’s witty, lascivious gyrations ignited fresh firecrackers of audible astonishment. The crap game concludes with Crown killing one of Porgy’s neighbors; a funeral scene follows: while the murdered man’s widow sings a lament, “My Man’s Gone Now,” the mourning inhabitants of Catfish Row sway in a tribal circle around the corpse. At this point, an important Soviet dignitary turned to a correspondent and said in Russian, “Ah, now I see! They are going to
eat
him.” The deceased, undevoured, was trundled off to his grave, and the opera progressed to Porgy’s optimistic “I’ve Got Plenty of Nothin’.” Scott, a big and solidly constructed baritone, belted it across the footlights with a fervor that should’ve stopped the show. It didn’t.

The audience’s persistent silence seemed not altogether attributable to apathy; rather, for the most part, it appeared to be the result of troubled concentration, an anxious desire to understand; and so, fearful of missing the essential phrase, the significant clue that would unmask the mysteries confronting them, they listened and watched with the brooding intentness of students in a lecture hall. But the first act was almost over before the warmth that comes with comprehension wafted through the theater. It was created by “Bess, You Is My Woman Now,” a duet sung by the two principals: suddenly it was clear that Porgy and Bess were in love, that their song was a tender rejoicing, and the audience, rejoicing too, deluged the performers with applause that was brief but heavy, like
tropic rain. However, the drought set in again as the music segued into the jamboree fanfare of “I Can’t Sit Down,” the first-act finale. The scene is peppered with folklorish humor; and, occasionally, isolated chuckles, lonely-sounding patches of laughter, indicated there were persons who appreciated it. The curtain descended. Silence. The house lights began to come up; the audience blinked, as though until this instant they hadn’t known the act was over. They caught their breath, like passengers at the end of a roller-coaster ride, and began to applaud. The applause lasted thirty-two seconds.

“They’re stunned,” said Lowry, parroting the words, though somehow transforming the spirit, of Breen’s prophecy. “They’ve never seen anything like it.”

If the Russians were stunned, they were not alone. Several of the American journalists huddled together, comparing notes. “It’s not going over,” a baffled Dan Schorr complained to a bewildered Time-Life photographer. And Mrs. Bohlen, following her husband up the aisle, was poignantly pensive. Later she told me the thought behind the expression: “I was thinking—well, we’ve laid an egg. Now what are we going to do about it?”

Out in the crowded lobby, Mrs. Breen smilingly expressed sentiments of a sunnier nature; according to her, the performance was going “beautifully.” A correspondent interposed to ask why, in that case, the Russians were “sitting on their hands.” Mrs. Breen stared at the questioner as though she thought him certifiable. “But they aren’t
supposed
to applaud,” she said. “Robert
planned
it that way. So that there wouldn’t
be
any applause. It interrupts the mood.”

The Wolferts agreed with Mrs. Breen; they felt the première was turning out a triumph. “First time we’ve seen the show,” said Wolfert. “I don’t like musicals. Got no use for them. But this one’s pretty good.”

Another American, the Russian-speaking Priscilla Johnson, spent
the intermission eavesdropping on the customers. “They’re quite shocked,” she reported. “They think it’s awfully immoral. But gosh, you can’t blame them for not liking it. It’s such a second-rate production. That’s what makes me sad. If only it were
really
good, then you could blame them. Too bad, too bad,” she said, ruffling her bangs, shaking her head. “This whole setup: the Breens, the publicity and all—gosh, it’s just not geared for failure.”

Like Miss Johnson, Savchenko and Adamov circulated about sampling opinions. “It’s a very big success” was all Savchenko would admit; but Adamov, whose slang was growing richer under the company’s tutelage, said, “So a lot of squares don’t dig it. They don’t flip. So is that big news? You got squares in New York, ain’tcha, man?”

Madame Nervitsky and her crooner-husband passed by. “Oh, we’re amazed,” she told me, flourishing a sword-length cigarette holder. “Nervitsky thinks it
très dépravé
. Not I. I adore the vileness of it all. The rhythm, the sweat. Really, the Negroes are too amusing. And how wonderful their teeth!” Moving closer, she said, “You did tell your friends? Room 520. Don’t telephone, come quietly, bring anything. I will pay very well.”

Stefan Orlov was standing at a refreshment counter, a glass of mineral water in his hand. “My friend,” he said, clapping me on the shoulder. “What a night we had, yes? The next morning, my wife, she had to beat me out of bed. Tie my shoes and knot my tie. Not angry, you understand: laughing at me.” He produced a pair of opera glasses, and peered through them. “I saw Nancy. I wondered if I should try to speak to her. But I said to myself no, Nancy is sitting with fashionable people. Will you tell her that I saw her?” I said I would, and asked if he was enjoying
Porgy and Bess
. “I wish I had a ticket for every night. It’s an experience. Powerful! Like Jack London. Like Gogol. I will never forget it,” he said, pocketing the opera
glasses. A frown creased his forehead, he opened his mouth to speak, changed his mind, took a swallow of water instead, then changed his mind again, and decided to tell me. “The question isn’t whether I forget. Or what we old ones think. It’s the young people who matter. It matters that they have new seeds planted in their hearts. Tonight,” he said, looking around the lobby, “all these young people will stay awake. Tomorrow, they’ll be whistling the music. A nuisance, humming in the classrooms. And in the summer, that’s what you’ll hear: young people whistling along the river. They won’t forget.”

Backstage, a tranquil climate prevailed as the performers readied themselves for the second act. Leslie Scott, not the least unnerved by the reception of the previous stanza, grinned and said, “Sure, they’re kinda slow. But most audiences don’t warm up until the duet [“Bess, You Is My Woman Now”], and that went over okay. From here on out, we’ll sail.” Martha Flowers, freshening her make-up in front of a mirror, said, “This audience, that audience, I don’t know the difference. You wouldn’t either, you been doing this show two years.” But Sascha, lacking Miss Flowers’ professional
savoir
, was an alarming sight as he waited in the wings to repeat his role of plot narrator: head bowed, and holding to a dancer’s practice bar like a fighter on the ropes, he listened dazedly while his seconds, Igor and Henry, whispered encouragement.