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Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Thomson: Four Saints in Three Acts
Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:
This isn't the first time I have broadcast Virgil Thomson's Four Saints in Three Acts (1934) at Thanksgiving time. I previously aired a recording of it on Sunday, November 27, 1988. The staged premiere took place here in Hartford at the Wadsworth Atheneum with an all-black singing cast. America's lesbian poetess-in-exile Gertrude Stein conceived the operatic project and provided a libretto. She had travelled to Spain and fallen in love with St. Teresa of Avila, compatriot and younger contemporary of St. Ignatius Loyola.
In Four Saints in Three Acts (with a brief fourth act to boot) you'll find that the Catholic cult of the saints can actually be fun! Here's lyric theater that is whimsical, folksy and more than a little crazy. Four Saints is a surrealistic Sunday school pageant. At Thanksgiving of 1988, I aired the Nonesuch recording, for which the composer wrote some of the libretto booklet notes. The opera was performed at Carnegie Hall on Friday the Thirteenth of November, 1981, in honor of the composer's 85th birthday. Thomson also lent a guiding hand in the production. Could such a recorded performance be bested? Well, judge for yourself and listen now to the 2016 BMOP Sound release of Four Saints with Gil Rose conducting the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, with eleven vocal soloists.
The booklet for this two CD release carries a note by the deceased composer about his work with Gertrude Stein on the project. He collaborated with her again in an opera about feminist icon, Susan B. Anthony: The Mother of Us All (1947). I have aired recordings of that other Virgil Thomson opera twice before on Sunday, October 5, 1986 and long after, on Sunday, September 7, 2014. Like so many other recordings of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, this one was made in Mechanics Hall in Worcester, Massachusetts. I'm proud to offer up to you over the airwaves a truly New England-based audio production as a listening feast for your ears.