During this tour, Porgy and Bess was presented for the first time at La Scala in Milan in February 1955. A historic yet tense premiere took place in Moscow in December 1955; it was during the Cold War and the first time an American theater group had been to the Soviet capital since the Bolshevik Revolution. Author Truman Capote traveled with the cast and crew, and wrote an account included in his book The Muses Are Heard.
