Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Gordon: "27"

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

Ricky Ian Gordon strikes again with yet another lyric theater piece on a historical subject, to be specific: gay history. The title of this opera refers to the address in Paris: 27 Rue de Fleurus, where life partners Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas dwelled, and where they hosted those salons that attracted the artistic greats of the 1920s. Let's not forget literary innovator Gertrude Stein's connection to opera. She wrote the librettos for two operas with music by Virgil Thomson: Four Saints in Three Acts (1928) and The Mother of Us All (1946).

It's perfectly fitting that a gay American composer of the twenty first century should be inspired to write an opera about a famous lesbian couple. Royce Vavrek worked up a libretto for an operatic fantasy based upon Stein's life, with Toklas playing a critical part in the proceedings. For the larger-than-life role of Gertrude Stein, Gordon already had in mind the voice of contralto Stephanie Blythe, the perfect match for whom he found in soprano Elizabeth Futral as Alice B. Toklas.

27 was commissioned and premiered by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. Michael Christie conducted members of the St. Louis Symphony. The recording of 27 was made live in performance in June, 2014 and was issued that same year on two compact discs by Albany Records. I present 27 this Sunday as special gay pride programming, keeping in mind the historic Stonewall uprising that took place in New York City's Greenwich Village gay ghetto during the last weekend of June, 1969.