Saints in Cellophane

"Virgil had asked Gertrude Stein to write an opera for him. Among the saints there were two saints whom she had always liked better than any others. Saint Theresa of Avila and Ignatius Loyola, and she said she would write an opera about these two saints. She began this and worked very hard at it all spring and finally finished Four Saints and gave it to Virgil to put it to music. He did. And it is a completely interesting opera both as to words and music."--Gertrude Stein in The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (TIME, Sept.11).

Virgil Thomson was in Hartford, Conn., last week for the premiere of the opera he and Gertrude Stein wrote together in Paris. It is called Four Saints in Three Acts although it has some 30 saints, a prelude and four acts. It was given in the new Avery Memorial wing of the Wadsworth Athenaeum and sponsored by "The Friends & Enemies of Modern Music." This New England organization is headed by A. Everett ("Chick") Austin Jr., a rich young Hartforder who directs the Hartford Museum and knew Virgil Thomson at Harvard when that young composer wore kid gloves to scull on the Charles.

When Four Saints was over last week Friend & Enemy Austin lost his voice shouting for Composer Thomson, for the Negro singers, for Conductor Alexander Smallens, for Florine Stettheimer who had done the sets and costumes, for Frederick Ashton who had come from London to devise the action. The Saints were supposed to be Spaniards but Virgil Thomson had chosen Harlem Negroes because of their diction. White singers, he feared, would act foolish and self-conscious chanting such lines as "Let Lucy Lily Lily Lucy Lucy let Lucy Lucy Lily Lily Lily Lily Lily let Lily Lucy Lucy let Lily. Let Lucy Lily."

The Negroes, all stained the same shade of brown, were natural and earnest. A handsome buck in evening clothes and a girl who might have been a Cotton Club entertainer, acted as end men, called out the scenes and acts and whatever comments Gertrude Stein had chosen to make. There were two Saint Thereses, called Saint Therese I and Saint Therese II. They both wore flowing cardinal costumes, appeared to have the same identity, except that one was a soprano, the other a contralto.

Before long Saint Therese is identified as an aggressive, energetic woman, more like an American than like a cloistered Spanish lady. The saintly chorus, dressed in pale blue and wearing silver gloves and bits of halos, furnish the description by singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and following it directly with "Saint Therese Something Like That." Whereupon the end men call out "Enter Saint Therese."

What, if anything, happens after that the audience was hard put to understand. In Act I, labeled "Avila: Saint Therese half indoors and half out of doors," Saint Therese holds the stage, permits herself to be photographed with an old-fashioned camera covered with black cloth. Other saints bombard her with questions. Finally when the chorus solemnly asks her: "If it were possible to kill 5,000 Chinamen by pressing a button would it be done?" an end man replies for her: "Saint Therese not interested."

Act II, labeled "Might it be mountains if it were not Barcelona," has in it a bit of pease-porridge-hot, a high-stepping Harlem ballet for which Saint Therese says "Thank you very much." Act III ("Saint Ignatius and One of Two literally") belongs to Baritone Edward Matthews, a Fisk Choir alumnus, who sang richly while the other male saints wove nets, danced a fandango, posed more Gertrude Stein questions. Act IV ends with the assembled saints pointing at the audience, shouting "Which is a fact." Fact is that, mad and fanciful though it may be, Four Saints in Three Acts is a charming and entertaining opera well worth the Manhattan engagement which starts Feb. 20. Gertrude Stein's meaning may be unfathomable but Virgil Thomson's music is so simple and singable that spots in it suggest nursery songs built on the easy variations of the scale. There is no hint of dissonance in the clearly harmonized choruses and the Negroes sang them as fervently as though the silly words had a saintly meaning.

The brown of the Negro faces added the perfect bit of color to Florine Stettheimer's shiny sets, the clouds of cellophane against a green-blue sky, the absurd palms that make Saint Therese's bower. Out of a libretto which suggested little in the way of staging, Frederick Ashton devised pantomime which would have been effective without words and music. Gertrude Stein's text, as usual, provided the controversy. But for many a hearer its senselessness had been forgotten by the end of the performance. Few operagoers can understand words that are sung, whether they be in German, French or English. Gertrude Stein had chosen words for their sound rather than for their meaning, words that would fit into a musical line. The "Lucy Lily Lily Lucy" passage looked comic in the libretto but sung softly by an off-stage chorus, it was a lovely lilting sound that no one troubled to decipher. And Saint Ignatius made a seemingly reverent aria out of: "Pigeons on the grass alas. Short longer grass short longer longer shorter yellow grass Pigeons large pigeons on the shorter longer yellow grass alas pigeons on the grass. . . ."

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