February 8: On this day in 1934, the opera Four
Saints in Three Acts by Gertrude Stein (libretto) and Virgil Thomson
(music) premiered. The opera was popular, though some attended for the usual
Stein reasons, hoping for some eccentric fun, or to be present for the launch of
some freshly-coined Steinism. Others attended the Hartford, Connecticut opening
or the later New York run because Four
Saints was a modernist event. In Hartford, the production was backed by
"The Friends and Enemies of Modern Music," and concurrent with the
opening of a Picasso exhibition. The avant-garde artist Florine Stettheimer
costumed the all-Negro cast—"a Negro is a Negro," said Stein, "and
he ought to like to be called one if he is one"—in cellophane, newly
invented. Special trains were organized to take the New York in-crowd to
Hartford, and Buckminster Fuller took a carful (Isamu Noguchi, Clare Boothe
Luce, Dorothy Hale) in his bubble-shaped Dymaxion.
Stein did not attend the
opening, but Four Saints was such a
hit that she overcame her apprehensions about America, arriving that autumn for
a six-month lecture tour. It was her first trip home in thirty years, and she
would not make another, but it was seen as a triumph on all sides. She and
Alice were news from start to finish, and if some of the headlines poked the
usual fun—"Gerty Gerty Stein Stein is Back Home Home Back"—many who
met or listened found her approachable, and fascinated by America. The White
House invited her for tea, and the famous threw parties in her honor, but she
seemed most interested in the geography, the food, and "ordinary people
who don't bore me. Highbrows, you know, always do." These preferences led
to an afternoon at the Yale-Dartmouth football game, hanging out in drug
stores, a tour of a spark plug factory, and a delight in the roadside poetry of
the Burma-Shave ads.
She did enjoy a production
of her Four Saints in
Chicago. While there, she and Alice were thrilled with a police-conducted,
rainy night tour of the slums of the city during which, Stein later recalled,
they listened on the squad car radio to the successful entrapment of Baby Face
Nelson by federal agents.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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