Performing Catfish Row in the Soviet Union: The Everyman Opera Company andPorgy and Bess, 1955–56

Abstract

For three weeks in 1955 and 1956 the Everyman Opera Company staged Porgy and Bess in Leningrad and Moscow. In the previous two years, the Robert Breen and Blevins Davis production of Gershwin's opera had toured Europe and Latin America, funded by the U.S. State Department. Yet when Breen negotiated a performance tour to Russia, the American government denied funding, stating, among other reasons, that a production would be “politically premature.” Surprisingly, however, the opera was performed with the Soviet Ministry of Culture paying the tour costs in full. I argue that this tour, negotiated amid the growing civil rights movement, was a non-paradigmatic example of cultural exchange at the beginning of the Cold War: an artistic product funded at different times by both the United States and the Soviet Union. Through an examination of the tour's archival holdings, interviews with surviving cast members, and the critical reception in the historically black press, this essay contributes to ongoing questions of Cold War scholarship, including discussions on race, identity, and the unpredictable nature of cultural exchange.