Virgil Thomson & Gertrude Stein

At our meeting last night and at dinner afterwards, there was some discussion of Four Saints in Three Acts by Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein, which Van Vechten was enthusiastic about.

The work was first performed in 1934. It had an all-black cast, but the opera doesn’t especially call for one. I saw a production in New York, which I’ve now established was in 1996, by the Houston Grand Opera with a racially mixed cast, and I think there have been productions by casts of various racial compositions.

The production I saw was directed by Robert Wilson (of Einstein on the Beach fame). It was initially beautiful to look at – cut outs of sheep that went floating off in the air – but after a while it got rather monotonous. There was not much interesting stage movement, or differentiation of scenes or characters. Snippets I’ve seen of the 1934 production were much more lively. Thomson and Stein provide virtually no guidance about staging.

Generally I find the second Thomson/Stein collaboration, The Mother of Us All, much more satisfying. The central character is Susan B. Anthony, and scenes connect with her life and work, though there is not a plot and there are plenty of Steinian touches (for instance, characters in her life, as opposed to Anthony’s, appear in the work). Susan B.’s final soliloquy is one of the most moving passages in opera that I know, and I read that the New Yorker critic Andrew Porter considered this the greatest American opera. There is a wonderful recording from the Santa Fe Opera with Mignon Dunn.

I saw Virgil Thomson in person at an event sometime in the 1970s at some performance venue in the Berkshires. It was an evening of short compositions and excerpts of his, and an interview with him. Thomson was brought up in Kansas City. The interviewer, rather breathless, asked him what it was like to be an American in Paris in the 1920s. He replied, “It was a lot like Kansas City” – and went on to explain why. 

Another Thomson line (don't know where I heard this): he and a male companion were walking up Fifth Avenue one day, and saw coming towards them two stunningly beautiful women. The women went past, Thomson sighed, and said to his friend, “You know, there are times when I wish I were a lesbian...”

Finally, Florine Stettheimer's portrait of Van Vechten.

She famously designed sets made of cellophane for the first production of Four Saints. Very evocative, I think.