Customer Reviews

Virgil Thomson: Four Saints In Three Acts

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

 

 

This is wonderful music -- inventive, tunefull, distinctive. This recording is complete and digital, but the RCA re-issue of Thomson's 47 is to be preferred. I own both.

What fun this opera is! Virgil Thomson likes to play with the orchestra and singers as much as Gertrude Stein likes to play with the English language. It's nonsense, but it's not. Part of the fun is trying to make some sense of the cryptic libretto....indeed, you can't help it. Your brain wants to make something of it. The music almost gives it logic, but (cleverly) stops short of filling in the blanks for you. (Regardless of the original intent, the opera has something to say about the difficulties of expressing the divine experience....I think) True, Thomson's music is not plumbing the depths of the human psyche, but it is inventive and witty. Indeed, many modern "neo-romantics" could learn a lot about being accessible without being sentimental or schmaltzy. Well worth multiple listenings.

I've characterized this as "surealists invading a camp meeting"... but that doesn't do it justice. Much of Stein's text seems cryptic (though it sings beautifully in Thompson's hands), but moments like the chorus singing:

"St. Teresa being photographed dressed like a lady and then they taking out her head changed it to a nun and a nun a saint and a saint so."

followed by St. Teresa singing:

"Can women have wishes?"

are crystal-clear. Thompson invokes Wagner and Puccini, adds (with Stein's help) a patriotic opening and a Spanish ballet, and even tosses in a witty though perfectly appropriate parody of "The Trumpet Will Sound" from Handel's "The Messiah" while never straying too far from the two-chord base of the music. The singers and sonorities are wonderful. This is timeless music and text, wonderfully performed, and certainly worth the price of the CD.

I can't understand why the presentation of this item omits the relevant fact of who wrote the libretto. The text is by Gertrude Stein. Virgil Thompson asked Gertrude Stein for an opera, and she wrote the text.

I guess I would have to be the decenting voice here. I really thought this opera was a waste. I really care less if Gertude Stein wrote the words. There is nothing in this work. The music is interesting, that I will admit. The singing is HORRIBLE, not because the notes are sung badly, but once again the English is incomprehensible (and to make things worse, the meaning of the libretto is just as incomprehensible; combine the two and what in Heaven's name is really being communicated). Virgil Thomas has never excited me as a composer. His operas are so forgettable, and this one is no exception. I wonder, though, what the great voice of Leontyne Price sounded like in the work, after all, she did sing in it. But even her English is incomprehensible much of the time when singing these sorts of operas (I have some highlights of Barber's Anthony and Cleopatra with her singing Cleopatra's death scene, and I believe that is about all we will ever find of Price in this work; of the entire scene I think you may understand what would amount to half a sentence of the words). I feel really alienated when listening to an opera and I can't figure out what they are singing about. I have no trouble with singers singing German, French, Italian, or even Russian. Most of the time their diction is super, and if you speak the languages, you are well aware of what is going on. English is my native language, and I find it so disheartening when I have more ease understanding everything sung in a foreign language than when I hear it sung in my native tongue. I would advice all librettist of the English language to not bother writing any real words, just make some groupings of sounds, and throw in a harsh consonant or two, and we would understand just as much of what you write as we do when you write real words. And I guess there is nothing wrong with being strange with the language as Stein is, for her words are as silly as those by E.E. Cummings, total nonsense. I rated it a four star because it is a great representation of the work, a million times better than the recording of "Mother of us all." It left me cold, and it bored me. In many ways, I was left feeling, "well, when she learns to actually write words that are worth listening to, and he learns to actually write music and what it is all about, then we will have something worthy listening to." Add to that, when the singers actually learn to sing their own mother tongues with meaning and with clarity. It is terrible to feel that way after listening to a work. Sadly, that is what this recording did for me.