Music: Porgy Orgy

London’s first-nighters hardly knew what to expect. All week the musicians’ union had nipped at the touring, all-Negro production of Porgy and Bess: either a Briton would conduct or the orchestra would strike.

Producer Blevins Davis and Director Robert Breen, with visions of Gershwin’s jazz opera sounding like Pomp and Circumstance, threatened to close the show after only three performances. Only at the last minute did they tuck up their pride and name a local man as “joint” conductor. The curtain rang up as scheduled with the production’s own Alexander Smallens on the podium and his British colleague seated near by with a score in his lap.

The audience gave the show thunderous approval. The Daily Mail called it “a theatrical event of major importance.” The Daily Telegraph found it “completely shattering.” Said the Daily Mirror: “Porgy is an orgy in music.”

Last month Porgy won the same kind of applause in Vienna and Berlin. Opera-snobbish Vienna had not been so stirred by an “outside” opera since its first sight of Cavalleria Rusticana in 1902; Berlin had never seen anything like it, mobbed the cast for autographs.

Stars William Warfield and Cab Calloway (in his first stage role, as Sportin’ Life) thought the show went over even better in London. “Continental audiences were enthusiastic,” said Warfield, “but they missed things all the time.” Porgy’s proprietors hoped for an all-winter run and then a tour of Europe’s festivals.