CULTURE PACT

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30678, 18 February 1965, Page 19

CULTURE PACT

Britain And Russia (N.Z.PA.-Rvutar—CopyrloM) MOSCOW, Feb. 16. Britain’* National Theatre, with Sir Laurence Olivier playing Othello, will visit Russia within the next two years under a British-Soviet cultural agreement has been signed. Russians will also see the Royal Ballet, the Royal Shakespeare Theatre Company and the 8.8. C. Symphony Orchestra, and the two countries will exchange theatrical directors. In return—if mutually acceptable contracts can be arranged—British audiences will see the Leningrad Kirov Ballet, another major Russian ballet group (perhaps the Bolshoi), the Black Sea Fleet Song and Dance Company, and Moscow Radio's Symphony Orchestra. The 17-page agreement was signed amid champagne toasts by Mr George Thomson, senior Minister of State at the Foreign Office, and Mr Sergei Romanovsky, chairman of the State Committee for Cultural Relations with Foreign countries.

Speaking at the ceremony, Mr Thomson said he hoped Mr Harold Wilson would be allowed to speak on Russian television when he visited Moscow, and that Mr Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet Premier, would give a similar talk when he visited London “in the near future.”