Subject: Submission: "Four Saints" -- a gay opera from the past speaks to our time
From: [email-masked]
Date: Sun, 4 Feb 1996 20:22:29 -0500

A Submission From

THE NEW LESBIAN 
AND GAY VOICE

1747 "S" Street, Northwest
Washington, DC 20009
Telephone: (202) 483-1311
Facsimile:  (202) 265-9737
Internet: [email-masked]

830 words, "Four Saints" opera advance.  If interested contact the author
directly,, Gary N. Reese <[email-masked]>
Austin, Texas/ (512) 447-6408
-------------------------------------------------------------

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NEW YORK POINTS, PLEASE NOTE:  This production of "Four Saints" will 
be part of the inaugural Lincoln Center Festival 96 this summer.  Artist
photographs and performance photographs may be obtained by contacting Jo
LaBrecque-French or Siegfried Schoen at the press office of Houston Grand
Opera; (713) 546-0240; 510 Preston, Houston, TX 77002-1594; fax: (713)
228-4355

"Four Saints" -- a gay opera from the past speaks to our time

By Gary N. Reese

	HOUSTON -- Exactly one year ago, Houston Grand Opera was 
feverishly putting the final touches on a world premiere, "Harvey Milk," 
based on the life of the late San Francisco city supervisor and gay rights 
activist, the first grand opera in history with homosexuality as its
principal 
theme.
	Now, HGO is back with another "gay" opera, but this time it is not the 
protagonist, but the creators of the work who make it so -- librettist 
Gertrude Stein and composer Virgil Thomson.
	"Four Saints in Three Acts" is receiving its first major American 
production since its premiere more than 60 years ago with a new design 
and staging by Robert 
Wilson on Friday, Jan. 26.  This production will be seen later this 
year as part of the inaugural Lincoln Center Festival 96. 
              Wilson, one of the most 
sought-after opera designers and directors in the world, staged 
Wagner's "Parsifal" in Houston in 1992 and helped create the avant-garde 
theater piece, "Einstein on the Beach," with Phillip Glass in 1976.  The 
conductor is Dennis Russell Davies, a leading proponent of modern music, 
who also will conduct the work later this year at the Lincoln Center Festival

in New York City.
	"Saints" marked a turning point for American musical theater, but 
over the years, it has become a work that is more heard about than heard.  
Stein and Thomson, two American expatriates living in Paris, conceived of 
the opera in early 1927.  They settled on the subject of 16th century 
Spanish saints, because, as Thomson later wrote, "we saw among the 
religious a parallel to the life were leading, in which consecrated artists 
were  . . . channeling their skills without loss of inspiration." They chose
two 
historic figures for the cast -- Theresa of Avila and Ignatius Loyola.  "Miss

Stein liked the saints because they were Spanish, I liked them for being 
powerful," Thomson wrote.
	Thomson used Stein's text, which employs repeated words and 
phrases, as the basis for a tuneful and harmonically consonant 
composition.  From the beginning, the pair's approach to their material was 
unorthodox; Thomson even set some of Stein's stage directions to music.  
His score evokes modern Spanish dance and American military marches, 
waltzes, gospel and the Southern Baptist hymns of the composer's native 
Missouri.  And his music anticipates the minimalism of our own time, like 
that of Wilson's celebrated collaborator in past theatrical projects, Phillip

Glass.  
	It was seven years before "Saints" made it to the stage. Thomson 
and Stein feuded and broke off their relationship in 1931. Eventually, they 
made amends, financing for the work was secured, and the premiere took 
place in Hartford, Conn., in 1934 with an all-black cast, whom Thomson had 
recruited in Harlem.  "They alone possess the dignity, the poise, and the 
lack of self-consciousness, that proper interpretation of opera demands," 
Thomson declared.
	"A knockout and a wow," the critic Carl von Vechten wrote back to 
his friend Stein, who had stayed home in Paris with Alice B. Toklas.  From 
Hartford, the production moved to Broadway, where it played the Great 
White Way for six weeks, the longest continuous run an American opera had 
enjoyed on Broadway up to that time (although in a few short years, 
Gershwin's "Porgy and Bess" would claim that distinction).
	"Saints" has drawn other illustrious collaborators over the years as 
well.  John Horseman, who became famous later in life in the TV series, 
"The Paper Chase," was the opera's original producer and director.  
Frederick Ashton, at the time a young English dancer, fashioned the work's 
choreography; Ashton later became director and principal choreographer 
for Britain's Royal Ballet.
	And a 1952 New York revival of "Saints" -- which also employed an 
all-black case -- saw the first professional appearance in a minor role of a 
young Julliard student named Leontyne Price.
	Houston's cast, which will be racially mixed, is headed by the 
renowned American soprano Ashley Putnam in the role of St. Theresa I.  
Mezzo Suzanna Guzman, last heard in Houston's 1994 production of 
"Carmen," returns as St. Theresa II.  Baritone Sanford Sylvan, who created 
the role of Chou En Lai in Houston's 1987 world premiere of "Nixon in 
China," will sing the role of St. Ignatius.  Soprano Nicole Heaston sings St.

Settlement, and other principal case members include:  tenor Gran Wilson 
as St. Chavez, mezzo Marietta Simpson as the Commere, and bass Wilbur 
Pauley as the Compere.
	Remaining performances are at 7:30 p.m.  Feb  7 and 9.  The non-
literal, highly imagistic work lasts 91 minutes; there will be no
intermission, 
and the opera will be performed in English without surtitles.
	Ticket prices range from $15 to $75; orders may be placed by phone 
at 227-ARTS, or toll-free at 1-800-828-ARTS, or in person at the Wortham 
Center's ticket lobby or the courtyard level of Jones Hall, or at all 
TicketMaster locations.

-30-

A review on "Four Saints in Three Acts" and "La Boheme" also is available.