Our merry Mardi-Gras town looks beyond its wrought iron facade. In the musical chair struggle for the New World, Spain held but never kept New Orleans. A Spaniard discovered the land, a Spanish millionaire financed its colonial public buildings, a Spanish ruler laid down the city's first tax, and a Spaniard built the famous French Market. Yet France seemed to leave a greater imprint. In the eyes of the world, New Orleans always has been a bit of France, an outpost of the French language in a barbarian land. Lately the eyes have not seen clearly, for quietly and calmly New Orleans has been recaptured by the descendants of the people who lost it. Since World War II, Latin Americans have moved leisurely into New Orleans. You can not walk past the shops of Canal Street without hearing Spanish. The night clubs of the French Quarter fill up with Latin American businessmen vying with Texas oilmen in a race to spend money. The city's universities are enriched by Latin scholars and doctors studying cures for the medical, economic and engineering ills of their countries...

THE FIRST Inter-American Music Festival opens April 18 in Washington. The festival originally had been scheduled for April of last year, and New Orleans, which aspires to be the modern hub of the Americas, was the site chosen. The selection aimed to blend the old musical tradition of the city with the more recent Latin American hue that has covered the port commercially. But several months before the scheduled opening, with almost all commissioned music completed, officials mysteriously called everything off. And the music has marked time for a year. In calling off the event, the authorities concerned mumbled an odd excuse: the postponement was due to a delay in construction of an outdoor concert stage near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain. This was the first inkling most New Orleanians had that anyone ever contemplated building such a stage, and since then there has not been another scrap of information about it. Last December 8, The New York Times, while discussing the upcoming event in Washington, offered a more logical excuse: the festival was postponed last year so that it would not conflict with the program of the Institucion Jose Angel Lamas in Caracas and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico. But this, while justifying a change of time, does not explain the change of place. Both the initial announcement and the Times interpretation were too polite to hit the mark. New Orleans did not have a music festival last year because its businessmen, who have spent quantities of money and energy in the last fifteen years to attract Latin American trade, did not feel like wasting either to attract Latin American culture. The roots of the difficulty stretch to the nineteenth century, when New Orleans was the center of French Opera in the United States...

Mardi Gras revelers danced against a soggy background Tuesday, changing a few routines but none of the fun. If anyone appeared as Lady Godiva galloping through the French quarter, she did so well hidden by a raincoat. Masqueraders strolled through the streets as clowns with umbrellas, Indians with rain hats, knights with raincoats and tramps with ponchos. Light rain, however, did not keep thousands from jamming the parade route to catch favors from the 20 floats of Rex, lord of misrule and king of carnival, Since Washington's birthday and Mardi Gras fell on the same day the theme of Rex was the life of Washington. At night, another krewe, Comus, paraded its 17 floats describing Latin America and then joined Rex after a ball to close the carnival season. Since the 12th night after Christmas, private New Orleans social organizations called krewes have presented balls and parades. Midnight Tuesday night ended festivities and ushered in the lenten season...

Staged at New Orleans - Brilliant acting by Maureen Stapleton and the music of a young Italian last night put life into two aging plays of Tennessee Williams. The Pulitzer prize-winning playwright watched his "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an English opera by 32-year-old Rafaello de Banfield in a world premiere here. The opera, "Lord Byron's Love Letter," is based on the Williams play. Both plays were published 10 years ago. The moods of the two works do not blend. "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" is coarse and comic, while the opera is poetic and almost fragile. But both are good theater, and there is no difficulty in enjoying their separate emotions. Miss Stapleton is exciting as the soft, giggling wife a Mississippi cotton gin owner unknowingly trades for burning down a big plantation gin. She moves deftly between scenes of pain and laughter...

A play and an opera mixed in a world premiere Monday night to produce an odd but exciting evening with Tennessee Williams. With the help of New Orleans talent, a Broadway cast presented Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an opera by Raffaello de Banfield was based on another short play by Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letters." In their different ways, the play and opera have similar stories to tell. Both are concerned with people who hold to the past. In "27 Wagons Full of Cotton," a small cotton gin owner in the Delta area of Northeast Mississippi tried to keep his place by burning down the Syndicate Plantation's big gin. The action of "Lord Byron's Love Letters," is the New Orleans French Quarter of the late 19th Century. An old woman lived in the memory of her love affair with Lord Byron, when she was 16. Moods of the works, however, are not the same. The play is coarse and comic, while the opera has poetic sweetness...

Fresh New Orleans talent tonight, will help Tennessee Williams roll his aging "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" towards Broadway. The one-act play, published ten years ago, will join an opera by young Italian composer Raffaello de Banfield in a double world premiere here. Written in English, the opera is based on another early play of Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letter." Unlike most professional shows, this one wants to grab more than applause and money from the city that starts its pre-Broadway tour. "We want these shows, despite the talent we bring in, to represent a community effort," says James S. Elliott of New York, the premiere's 29-year-old producer. Under an arrangement with Tulane University, Elliott has sliced expenses for the two-week run. Tulane and its Newcomb College for women will hand him without charge, theater, set designer, choreographers, musical director, lighting, costumes and stage crew. In exchange, Elliott promised to set up a Tennessee Williams writing scholarship at Tulane from the proceeds...

A young Broadway producer will save $70,000 tomorrow night by opening a Tennessee Williams play and an opera in New Orleans. With the help of Tulane University, 29-year-old James S. Elliott will present the world premiere of Williams' "27 Wagons Full of Cotton" and an opera by Italian composer Raffaello De Banfield. The opera, written in English, is based on another play of Williams, "Lord Byron's Love Letter." Usually a Broadway producer who wants an out-of-town tryout takes the complete show to Boston, Philadelphia or New Haven, Conn. Elliott, however, has taken an incomplete show to New Orleans and completed it with the city's theatrical talents. The producer picked New Orleans because Williams calls it home, the city's French quarter holds the action of "Lord Byron's Love Letter," and the scene of "27 Wagons of Cotton" is nearby Mississippi. Elliott's plans excited Tulane's drama department into offering free services and his own Broadway cast into approving salary cuts...