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‘Four Saints’ reopens door to modernism at YBCA "Four Saints" cast an alluring, quicksilvery spell” By Steven Winn August 18, 2011 Nicole Paiement was not an easy sell at first. Having conducted "The Mother of Us All" in graduate school, a production that was more duty than pleasure, the artistic director of San Francisco's Ensemble Parallèle didn't exactly leap at the idea of undertaking another opera by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson, the 1934 "Four Saints in Three Acts." Paiement, who believes strongly in the importance of narrative in opera, was put off by Stein's libretto, with its meandering scenes and nonsensical dialogue. Even the title's count of saints (actually about 20) and acts (four) was off. To say that the conductor's opinion has changed is an understatement. "I love this piece," Paiement said recently, before taking the baton for a lively afternoon rehearsal that displayed the intrinsic charms of Thomson's jaunty and tender score, Stein's somberly enticing babble and the striking conceptual makeover of Lalup Linzy's "Heavenly Act" will precede "Four Saints in Three Acts." this revival. [Photo: Courtesy SFMOMA / Max Snow] It's an 'opera installation' Opening for a preview tonight, followed by three regular performances over the weekend at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts' Novellus Theater, "Four Saints" is billed as an "opera installation." That speaks to the unusual nature and origin of this production. A fully staged version of the Stein-Thomson opera will be preceded by a new oratorio-like "Heavenly Act," with a commissioned score by Luciano Chessa and video projections and performance by Brooklyn artist Kalup Linzy. The evening runs about 90 minutes with no intermission. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art got the project rolling several years ago. Frank Smigiel, associate curator of public programs, wanted to create a performance component for SFMOMA's major exhibition "The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant- Garde" (on view through Sept. 6). "We figured the Matisses and Picassos were going to outweigh the avant-garde element," said Smigiel of the show about the collecting prowess of Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael and sister-in-law Sarah Stein. "So it was important to do something that registered Gertrude's very important role in avant-garde performance." "Four Saints" was the compelling first choice. First mounted in a museum setting, the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Conn., the opera moved to Broadway two weeks later and became an unlikely popular sensation. With its fractured story line, Stein's teasingly mysterious verbiage ("Pigeons on the grass alas"), an all-black cast and cellophane-rich sets by Florine Stettheimer, the premiere "was both an outrage against theatrical convention and a product of its stylish times," writes Steven Watson in his book "Prepare for Saints." "Its success," he continues, "epitomized the mainstreaming of modernism." Artist a bridge to original Looking to reconnect to the audacious spirit of the original, Smigiel approached Linzy, a black artist known for his video and performance Page 1 of 3 ‘Four Saints’ reopens door to modernism at YBCA "Four Saints" cast an alluring, quicksilvery spell” By Steven Winn August 18, 2011 pieces that often address gender and sexuality through the prism of the soap operas he grew up watching in rural Florida. His participation would resonate both with the original "Four Saints" all-black cast and with Stein's and Thomson's homosexuality. Smigiel enlisted the composer Chessa, who teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, to help bring Linzy on board. Mission accomplished at (Le) Poisson Rouge, a performance space in New York's Greenwich Village. After Ensemble Parallèle agreed to participate, Paiement and stage director Brian Staufenbiel devised a narrative overlay to organize the evening and connect the Chessa-Linzy "Heavenly Act" to the opera itself, which will be done in Stein and Thomson's shorter second version. An earlier plan to interpolate the new scenes and music into the original score was scrapped when the Thomson estate vetoed that proposal. As Paiement explained it, the new story line explores "the nonsensical ideas of our society about death." An ailing St. Teresa is assisted in her suicide by St. Ignatius. And yes, said the artistic director with a wry smile, she was struck by the coincidence that Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the assisted-suicide advocate, had recently died himself. In subsequent acts, Ignatius becomes a surgeon who saves rather than ends people's lives, a defendant accused of murder in a courtroom scene, and finally a man strapped into an electric chair. Not all will follow it Paiement, who led a triumphant Parallèle production of Philip Glass' "Orphée" earlier this year, conceded that "not everyone will really follow this plot exactly. But that's not important. We wanted to bring the language of the opera to another dimension. And what they find of the saints' philosophy, the audience may do with it what they will." Some of the visual elements echo the original production. A sheet of black plastic that will cover the stage during the "Heavenly Act" recalls the cellophane of Stettheimer's 1934 set. The performers' painted faces honor Thomson's wishes for the makeup, albeit with silver instead of gold. Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein go over the score for their creation, "Four Saints in Three Acts." [Photo: Beinecke Library, Yale Universit / Mabel Therese Bonney] Paiement talked up the score she had once resisted, calling its use of American musical idioms and frequent tempo changes "Cubistic. It's incredibly lyrical, with moments of great pathos." Even with only an electric piano to hint at the colors an accordion-enhanced orchestra will reveal during the run, "Four Saints" cast an alluring, quicksilvery spell in rehearsal. Mesmerizing rehearsal One ensemble toyed gravely with rhyming non sequiturs: "Wed. Dead. Lead. Said." A series of numbers provided the text for a beguiling fugue. "The envelopes are all on the fruit of the fruit trees," went another line of dialogue. When Eugene Brancoveanu, as St. Ignatius, was rolled onstage in a giant electric chair, a caterwauling waltz broke out. Director Staufenbiel stopped that last scene to give the chorus a note about their demeanor around the chair. "We don't want to be too bouncy when we're electrocuting him," he advised. Page 2 of 3 ‘Four Saints’ reopens door to modernism at YBCA "Four Saints" cast an alluring, quicksilvery spell” By Steven Winn August 18, 2011 "Four Saints in Three Acts" may seem to drift pretty far from discernible sense from moment to moment. But everyone involved in this production seems determined to find a meaning in the madness. ! The original production of "Four Saints in Three Acts" featured an all-black cast and cellophane-rich sets by Florine Stettheimer and helped bring modernism into the mainstream. [Photo: Beinecke Library, Yale Universit / Harold Swahn] Page 3 of 3.

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