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Among the national pavilions, the big two for popularity are already the U.S. and Russia. Inside Buckminster Fuller's splendid "sky-break bubble," the U.S. exhibit (which cost $9,300,000) focuses on a soft-sell kind of pop-camp Happening that plays off the works of Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol and Helen Frankenthaler against 20-ft. posters of Hollywood stars. There is also an impressive presentation of U.S. space accomplishments, including a re-entry-scorched Apollo craft. The Soviets, ensconced like bourgeois spendthrifts in a $12 million structure (designed by Italians) just 675 ft. across a canal from the American showplace, have foregone the traditional raised-fist propaganda of Communism that they brought to Brussels. This time they have a private pool for a small school of caviar-producing sturgeons and, surprisingly, a display of Russian Orthodox icons. Nevertheless, the core of the Soviet show is a heavy-thinker's exhibit of futuristic city plans, models for gigantic power projects, space satellites and cosmonauts' capsules, along with a model of the moon's surface—made of rock chunks brought from Arizona.
For architecture buffs, there are such fascinations as an Expo "theme" building shaped from truncated tetrahedrons; the kaleidoscopic tower of the Man in the Community pavilion; Quebec's all-glass structure which reflects the sky and clouds so that it seems to float; Japan's powerful jutting-beam construction; Cuba's geometric pavilion; and Ontario's surprisingly graceful canvas tent stretched over steel poles to form a series of canted triangles.
Masterworks & Bolshoi. Beyond its scenic wonders, Expo 67 has an entertainment panoply that seems to roll into one the attractions of Disneyland and Copenhagen's Tivoli garden. Appearing there over the next six months will be an array of talent unmatched in showbiz history. In Expo's magnificent new stadium there will be, at one time or another, an international soccer championship, a lacrosse tournament, an inter-American track meet, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and a rodeo. The new Place des Arts will be an opera lover's Valhalla, with performances by the Milan's La Scala Opera Company, Vienna's State Opera, the Bolshoi Opera, the Hamburg State Opera and the Stockholm Royal Opera —and for each it will be the first appearance ever in North America.
Theater? Laurence Olivier, who opened Expo's drama season last week by reading passages from a poem written by Expo Commissioner General Pierre Dupuy, will return in the fall to the Place des Arts with the National Theater of Great Britain; he will do Shakespeare's Othello (unfortunately, the four performances have been sold out for months). Symphony orchestras? The parade was led off on May 1 by the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta, will be followed by the New York Philharmonic, the Czech Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, along with the Bath Festival Orchestra with Yehudi Menuhin. Painting and sculpture? Thirty million dollars worth of masterpieces from the great museums and collections round the world in a brand new museum (see ART). Popular entertainers? Carol Channing will be there in Hello, Dolly! at the Garden of Stars amphitheater.