Lines formed before the Paris Opera box office, and black marketeers sharked tickets at ten times their original prices.
Parisians, recalling the magic of the name "Ballets Russes" from the Diaghilev days, were excitedly preparing to look at the first performance in Western Europe by a sizable (50 members) Soviet ballet troupe. But the day before the opening, news came that Dienbienphu had fallen to Moscow's Communist allies in Indo-China. While defeated on the military front and retreating on Geneva's diplomatic front, the French stiffened on the ballet front.
Government officers heard that a group of Foreign Legionnaires had taken a block of...
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