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Four Saints in Three Acts. Score by Virgil Thomson, libretto by Gertrude Stein. Houston Grand Opera, Brown Theatre, Wortham Theatre Center, Houston, Texas. 3 February 1996.
In 1927, having set several of Gertrude Stein's shorter compositions to music, Virgil Thomson commissioned Stein to write the libretto for an opera. The two collaborators eventually settled on the subject of saints, Stein selecting her two favorites-Teresa of Avila and Ignatius of Loyola. The prologue to the opera prepares nervously for Saint Teresa, who arrives amid a watery deluge with the opening of act 1. But Saint Ignatius takes much longer to appear and once he does he literally pales in comparison to the doubled Saint Teresa. As most commentators would have it, Teresa's mystical longing for physical and spiritual union is opposed by Ignatius's reliance on reason, analysis, and isolation. This production embodies that gendered theme but with a light and mischievous touch.
Robert Wilson's direction and design, Jennifer Tipton's lighting, and Francesco Clemente's costumes comment archly on the libretto and musical score, realizing in Wilson's visual register the light, bright quality of this modernist cause célèbre. As with other Wilson renditions of celebrated works, this Four Saints visually quotes earlier productions of the opera: the 1934 premiere directed by John Houseman, with its cellophane wrap set and all-black cast, as well as the 1952 revival, again staged with the cellophane, candy-box...