Customer Reviews

The Mother of Us All

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For my money, _The Mother of Us All_ may be the finest American opera yet written. The unusual subject matter concerns Susan B. Anthony and the progress of women's rights in America. But this work emerges as neither feminist dogma nor facile avant-gardism. Virgil Thomson's simple, spare music evokes Puritan hymnody; Gertrude Stein's libretto is marked by a brilliant, analytical intelligence. The result is an uncommonly American product -- not imitative of European models or superficially parodic (as I think is frequently true of the earlier Stein/Thomson collaboration _Four Saints in Three Acts_). This opera seems to develop organically, rather than in accordance with any previous stage model. Perhaps for this reason, _The Mother of Us All_ hasn't found a place in standard opera repertory.

Sadly, this 1977 recording from the Santa Fe Opera has several serious flaws. Sound quality is not especially good, and the singers are performing in a self-consciously "operatic" mode that doesn't always suit this piece. (That said, the final aria "My Long Life" is still a knockout.) The orchestra, however, sounds fine; tempi are fairly brisk, and the ensemble holds together.

I'm splitting the difference with my rating -- five stars for the source material and three (at best) for the performance. The time has come for another, better recording.

Most modern operas, especially American ones, fail badly in that the singers are given very little of musical interest while the orchestra often is reduced to film-score background effects that become meaningless and quickly boring. Virgil Thomson has been highly praised by his colleagues, although the public never proved quite as enthusiastic. I never particularly liked any of his works, with the exception of "Louisiana Story" which was written for a film, but I have to admit that I began almost to enjoy his contribution to the opera <The Mother of Us All>. Since it is available on the venerable New World Records label (NW 288/289-2), I want to bring it to your attention. Purporting to tell the story of Susan B. Anthony, it uses a libretto by Gertrude Stein that is maddeningly "deconstructionist." For those who didn't major in English, that means sentences are reduced (Japanese style) to basic words. Try this for size: "And in a way, yes, in a way, yes, really in a way, in a way, really in a way, it is useful to be right. It does what it does, if you are right." Fine for a while, but since the entire libretto is made up of such "Rose is a rose is a rose" sentiments it quickly palls. On the other hand, the New Englandy Churchy music of Thomson provides the perfect setting for Stein's jargon and leads me to wonder if the whole thing is a put on. In this recording, Raymond Leppard's conducting does not quite catch the basic New Worldliness that I feel the music should have; although the performances of The Sante Fe Opera, while not spectacular, are certainly idiomatic. At any rate, this work is miles better than the pap served up recently under the name "A Streetcar Named Desire" which failed for me on all levels. Again "Mother" fails if compared with the far more tuneful "Ballad of Baby Doe." Still it is worth a hearing.

In contrast to FOUR SAINTS IN THREE ACTS, this, Thomson's second opera in collaboration with Stein, is disappointing. Stein's libretto is, frankly, tedious (vacuous, frought with redundancies--whereas the more hermetic, nonsensical text of FOUR SAINTS is (though, for many, initially frustrating) continually interesting. That text inspired joyful music. But Thomson's setting for THE MOTHER is largely uninspired. The overture is wonderful, however, and his twice arranging 3 paragraphs to be sung simultaneously is, in both instances, exciting. As for the performance, it seems ok except that the lead singer, who plays Susan B., is just the sort of fruity-voiced opera singer Virgil would never have cast for the part. (I knew him.) In her high range, the words are indistinguishable. That's generally tolerated in European opera, but VT was all about NOT that.

OK, this is one of our really classy gringo composers teamed with a talented gringa poet to create a genuine gringo opera. Heartily recommended for catchy tunes, challenging lyrics, and general avant-gardeness. You won't be able to get Su-san B Anth-o-ny out of your head for weeks to come. Get it if you can find it and proselytize! Virgil Thompson trumps Copland any day.

I came to this work completely unprepared. I saw it at the store, and it sounded interesting. Being in the mood for modern American opera at the time, I decided to get it. The music is interesting, and in many ways quite moving, but I just couldn't get anything out of it all. After taking the time to learn who Susan B. Anthony and some of the other people in it were, my appreciation for what was being attempted improved, but my enjoyment of the work did not. Firstly, and I have made this complaint when reviewing most everything sung in English opera, the diction was so horrible it was impossible to fully appreciate what was being sung. Songs and arias are to communicate, and well, I felt I was witnessing a strange vocal lesson for most of the opera. I think it is criminal that opera singers are allowed to sing English so poorly, and I think we the buying public should do something about it. These same singers would have been taken to task had they recorded Mozart and had bad diction, or Verdi and were not understood. Why do we let such bad diction slip by when they sing English Opera? The performance itself never gelled either. It was so disjointed that it never really created a whole. To me, it was almost like no one really could figure out what it was all about: not the singers (and they obviously couldn't even figure out how to sing English so the rest of us could figure out what they were talking about), not the conductor, nor the director. All this is really sad, for the work has great merit. It is a very interesting work. The music is quite interesting. Since this is the only recording of the work I have (I don't know if there is another), repeated listening has not given me a better understanding or appreciation of the opera as a whole. To be bluntly honest, I was super bored through most of it (but I was more than bored through Four Saints in Three Acts, which really was a trial of my patience, but not quite the trial Barber's Anthony and Cleopatra was -- a recording totally boring, with very poor quality singers, and well, once again, impossible to understand the words, and in this case provided by Shakespeare). If there is a better recording of the work, I would love to discover it so I could make a more informed assessment. This is not the best recording, for quite frankly, no one involved knows what they are doing.