Stein Song

"To be funny," the late Gertrude Stein wrote, "you have to take everything in the kitchen and put it on the floor." Just about everything from the U.S.'s historical kitchen was on the stage last week at Columbia University; whatever was missing (such as a pinch of salt) could easily be added by the listener. The occasion was the first performance of Gertrude Stein's last finished work, a pleasant and unpretentious little opera, The Mother of Us All.

The score was by an old hand at setting Stein to song, Composer-Critic Virgil Thomson, who wrote the music for Gertrude's Four Saints in Three Acts. Since the business on stage (involving among others Ulysses S. Grant, Thaddeus Stevens, Daniel Webster and an angel) was pretty complicated, Thomson kept his music harmonically simple, rarely dissonant and sometimes hymnlike, and his adroit handling of the voices added some new inflections to Steinese.

The Mother of Us All turned out to be Proto-Feminist Susan B. Anthony (1820-1906). But Gertrude did not hesitate to drag in characters of other eras--notably a pair of folks archly named Gertrude S. and Virgil T. (Gertrude did not look like Miss Stein, nor Virgil like Mr. Thomson). Another, born of her delight with G.I.s, was called Jo the Loiterer. Hapless Andrew Johnson turned up, groaning throughout, "It's cold weather . . . wherever I am." And John Adams sniffed, "Do not pity me; I am an Adams and not pitiable."

Gertrude Stein's opera digressed wackily through a wedding and the "mystery of wealth and poverty" sung by Susan B. and Jo the Loiterer ("I used to think I was poor, now I think I am rich and I am rich, quite rich, not very rich quite rich . . ."), but it also had a Stein-like message. Sang Susan B.:

"... a hen screams frightfully when she sees an eagle but she is only afraid for her children, men are afraid for themselves, that is the real difference between men and women . . . Yes some day some day the women will vote and by that time ... it will do them no good because having the vote they will become like men, they will be afraid, having the vote will make them afraid."*

* Used by permission of copyright owners.

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