12 OCTOBER 1956, Page 7

THE PARTY ON the stage of the Royal Opera House

after the first performance of the Bolshoi Ballet reminded me painfully of the entertainment provided after the Queen's Coronation. There was the same determined rush for food and drink, the same insufficiency, the same dull regret at our national inability to follow a great formal occasion with an equally memorable informal one. But this time it was just as well. The hour was late and in all too short a time the dancers (such of them as came to the party) would have to be at it again. Not that they showed any wish to cut it short, and in the end, I believe, Mr. David Webster had to turf everyone out—civilly, of course, but long after the bottles had been emptied.

PHAROS