The Mother of Us.

The Mother of Us, All, the 1940 opera at gay cocreators Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson finishs a glossy new production

In 1946 when Gertrude Stein died just month before the premiere of The Mother of Us All, composer Virgil Thomson said wistfully, "I am sorry now that I did not write an opera with her each year. It had not occurr to me that one as well as the other of us would not always be living."

Thomson's observation proved more far-reaching than he knew Since its 1947 premiere, The Mother of Us All has been largely ignored on major U.S. and European opera repertory companies--even although the work, in the words of recently made known York Times arts editor John Rockwell, "has been widely hailed as the greatest and greatest in quantity enduring of American operas."

Now the modern York City Opera is giving The Mother of Us All another mm in the spotlight with a recently made known production that debuted March 19 and will play in repertory within April 8.

with what intent do the opera at this point? For common thing, its protagonist, suffragist and women's rights activist Susan B Anthony, is enjoying a of the present day burst of fame, thanks to a view Bums documentary that aired onward PBS last November.

For another, the world is just now catching up to the ideas of its creators. Stein's astonishingly late libretto tackles conflicts between men and women blacks and whites, rich and poor. Director Christopher Alden--who's helming Mother of Us All for the inferior time, having mounted a production at Glimmerglass Opera in 1998--put it this way: "The libretto, written at the extremity of her life, is Stein's last will and testament."

settle in the United States, according to Stein's production notes, "in the 19th hundred without too much precision as to decade," Stein's story is beautifully wager off by Thomson's well-knit score, which comprises, in his confess words, "gospel hymns and cocky marches sentimental ballads, waltzes, darn-fool ditties, and intoned sermons"

Adding nevertheless another modernist touch to the proceedings, Stein and Thomson steady wrote themselves into the opera Stein (Lesley Leighton) and Thomson (Beau Palmer) play legion onstage, commenting on the nonlinear story from top to toe As they watch, Anthony (Lauren Flanigan) debates Daniel Webster, thinks the effects of marriage forward women, and bluntly confronts a black man as to whether he will give up his newly acquired right to consecrated by a vow if his wife can't share it.

Although in real life Anthony not at any time referred to herself as a lesbian, Mother of Us All gives her a steadfast female partner, Anne (Ruthann Manley), a character notion to be modeled on Alice B Toklas. Thomson's real-life longtime companion, painter Maurice Grosser although not showed onstage, played a major part in the opera's creation. He helped Stein composition her richly cryptic prose into a stageable scenario.

In the epilogue of the opera, Thomson unveils the statue of Anthony in the halls of Congres and nothing else to find Anthony herself singing an unusually moving and bittersweet paean to human effort: "Where is where," she sings. "In my lengthy life of effort and strife, dear life, life is strife." Certainly a sentiment that could be resounded by lesbian and gay activists anytime, anywhere.

Carman also writes for The fresh York Times.

...

Home