and adaptations The first staged production took place in June 1938, when students at Smith College under the direction of Edith Burnett, adapted the play for dance as part of the school's commencement program. Oliver Waterman Larkin designed the sets.<ref>"The Fall of the City," Theatre Arts Magazine, December 1938.</ref> The play was presented again in the Columbia Workshop series on September 28, 1939, again featuring Orson Welles but broadcast from the Hollywood Bowl (though without any musical accompaniment), where the crowds were portrayed by students from the University of California, Los Angeles. A CBS television version was aired in 1962, as part of the Aspect series, starring John Ireland, Colleen Dewhurst, Ossie Davis and Tim O'Connor. The production was produced by Don Kellerman and directed by John J. Desmond. Jack Iams, TV critic of the New York Herald Tribune, observed "It is equally applicable today to the threat of world communism. It will always be applicable as long as mankind cherishes and protects the concept of liberty." The play was made into an opera composed by James Cohn. It had its premiere at the Peabody Institute on March 1, 1962, conducted by Laszlo Halasz. In 2009, the radio station WNYC aired a new version featuring a musical score by Wendy & Lisa. It was preceded by a documentary on the original broadcast which featured interviews with the film critic Leonard Maltin and the director Peter Bogdanovich. The production won a Gracie Award for the director. Accolades The original broadcast of The Fall of the City was added to the National Recording Registry in 2005. Analysis Director Irving Reis made much of radio's first verse play. "Hitherto, radio has been presenting drama that was frankly and avowedly adapted from stage writing. The men who are now becoming interested in radio writing, however, realize that there is small relationship between the stage and air and that a new form must be evolved...I believe that this production will definitely mark a turning point in the development of a new art form. Future historians of radio will see it as a most significant occasion." MacLeish described the theme of The Fall of the City as "the proneness of men to accept their own conqueror, accept the loss of their rights because it will in some way solve their problems or simplify their lives—that theme had also been projected in terms of [the expected Anschluss]