Paris, May 1952

Extract

The Paris Festival of Masterpieces of the 20th Century lasted throughout May, and few had time to see it all. Unlike many foreign festivals that spread themselves out over a similar period, it was crammed tight with good things throughout, with something of interest every night except Sundays from 30 April to 1 June. The third week was the climax of the festival, and in general the last two weeks were more exciting than the first two, which were apparently meant to draw the Parisian bourgeoisie, being devoted mainly to ballet by the New York City Ballet, and containing nothing in music worth a journey abroad except perhaps two performances by the Vienna Opera of Wozzeck, which is rapidly becoming as familiar as The Rite of Spring. In the last two weeks, the festival's so-called literary conferences on cultural freedom were held, and to give these the best possible chance of wide publicity, the organizers had cleverly saved up their musical trump cards until then, with what was virtually a Stravinsky-Bartók-Schoenberg week, Stravinsky himself conducting his two late symphonies and Oedipus Rex, with Cocteau as producer, designer, narrator (and of course librettist), followed in the last week by Billy Budd conducted by Britten, excerpts from Milhaud's setting of the Oresteia, and Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts.