Command Performance

The rococo Paris Opera House last week had its first command performance for troops since Hitler and friends were entertained there in June 1940. This time the audience was a khaki blend of 2,200 G.I.s, WACs, British Tommies. They got a lecture-demonstration of the mysteries of ballet.

The producers weren't sure just how much ballet G.I.s could stand, so they corned it up. The show traced the growth of a dancer from an eight-year-old student "rat" to the premiere danseuse in Giselle. Late in the evening, for the first time in its history, the Opera lifted all its backdrops, baring the entire 185-ft.-deep stage. Even members of the orchestra stood up in the pit to watch. Then stagehands in new blue uniforms (they refused to appear before the Americans in faded ones) changed sets, set up scenery for Les Deux Pigeons in two minutes, 30 seconds. In the lobby at intermission G.I.s talked knowingly of entrechats, and of how Nijinsky must have looked as Albrecht in Giselle. A U.S. newsman, hoping to send home a breezy story about mugs on a night out, stopped 100 soldiers, asked them if this was the first ballet they had ever seen. The condescending reply of G.I. balletomanes: "Are you kiddin'?"

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