This production restored a great deal of the music including some that had not been used before. Parts of the libretto were revised and cut and some musical numbers were displaced. Dialogue was added from the novel with the approval of Dorothy Heyward and many ad-libbed remarks from the workscript of the libretto were added for atmosphere.
Premiered in Dallas and from there toured to Vienna, Berlin, London, Paris, Broadway, many cities in the US and Canada, Europe (the Italian run was La Scala in Milan in February 1955), the Middle East, Latin America, Europe again, concluding in Moscow in June of 1956.
The run in Moscow is notable because it was the first time an American theatre troupe was allowed to perform in Moscow since the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Author Truman Capote travelled with the company, documenting the experience and included it in his book The Muses Are Heard.
