The Muses Are Heard - Truman Capote
Porgy and Bess in the USSR
CAPOTE, Truman. The Muses Are Heard. New York: Random House, 1956.
8vo, pp. 182. Very good in un-clipped dust-jacket (minor wear to spine ends). Dust-jacket design by Philip Grushkin, with English lettering to front face, and Slavonic to the rear.
First edition, first printing.
Written in reportage style this book is a captivating and entertaining account of the cultural mission by The Everyman's Opera to the U.S.S.R. in the mid-1950s, where the mostly black troupe performed the George Gershwin-Ira Gershwin-DuBose Heyward opera Porgy and Bess in Leningrad and Moscow. This was a historic cultural event, as The Everyman were the first American theatrical company to perform in the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik Revolution. Capote was sent to accompany the Opera, and to record the group’s Russian tour. The book's title comes from a speech given by one of the Soviet cultural ministry officials, who declared: ‘When the cannons are heard, the muses are silent. When the cannons are silent, the muses are heard.’