June 19, 1958
YUGOSLAVIA: London, 18 – The recent executions of former Hungarian Prime Minister Imre Nagy and General Pal Maleter by the pro-Soviet regime in Budapest have led to a truly explosive situation in the USSR’s relations with Yugoslavia. The government in Belgrade has abandoned its formerly reserved stance on the issue and today condemned the executions as a yet another premeditated policy aimed at escalating the Soviet alliance’s polemic against Yugoslavia. (Ed. note: Nagy had taken refuge in the Yugoslav Embassy in Budapest but had given himself up voluntarily after being promised he would not be prosecuted.) GREEK MYTHS: The multitalented artist Jean Cocteau has arrived in Vienna where he is to play the role of the narrator in Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio «Oedipus Rex,» for which he himself has written the libretto. At the 11th Aldeburgh Festival of Music and the Arts in Britain, Cocteau was acclaimed for his part in the premiere of Francis Poulenc’s new opera «Tiresias» set to a text by Apollinaire. Poulenc’s opera is considered to be on a par with «Dialogues of the Carmelites,» from the screenplay of the same name by Georges Bernanos.