CDF to Present Gielgud, Leighton In Shakespeare

Sir John Gielgud, Margaret Leighton, and Siobhan McKenna will perform this summer for the Cambridge Drama Festival in an all-Shakespeare program. They will appear in a 2000-seat theater being built for the Metropolitan District Commission on Soldiers Field Road past the Stadium.

In addition to directing, Gielgud will play Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing, opening Aug. 24. Miss Leighton will play Beatrice in the same production, according to William M. Hunt, executive producer of the CDF.

The season's premiere on July 10 will be Twelth Night, with Miss McKenna as Viola. July 30, she will appear as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. The Irish actress made her American debut in the title role of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan.

Also announced Monday was the appointment of architects to design an opera house that will eventualy adjoin the new theater on the Soldiers Field Road site. Perry T. Rathbone, president of MeBAC, and Talcott M. Banks, president of the Boston Opera Association, added that contributions have been received by the Opera House Fund and will be used to finance the building.

Preliminary Plans Next Fall

The firm of Shepley, Bulfinch, Richardson and Abbot, in cooperation with Pietro Belluschi, Dean of the M.I.T. School of Architecture and Planning, will present preliminary plans for the 3800-seat opera house next fall. A construction date will be set after that.

Henry R. Shepley, in conjunction with Belluschi, helped plan New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, which contains the new Metropolitan Opera House and the New York Philharmonic concert hall.

Detailed studies of opera houses throughout the world, prepared to aid in the design of Lincoln Center, have been made available to MeBAC by the Metropolitan Opera Association of New York, to help in the planning of the local opera house.