The Mother of Us All is one of the few truly great American operas. The second and final collaboration between Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein (she died before hearing the score), Mother is marvelous poetic theater, fusing Stein's rich and resonant libretto with Thomson's "memory-book of Victorian play-games and passions with its gospel hymns and cocky marches, its sentimental ballads, waltzes, darned-fool ditties, and intoned sermons a souvenir of all those sounds and kinds of tunes that were once the music of rural America." (Thomson's own description).
Because of its humane complexity and the unity of its artistic vision, The Mother of Us All remains an astonishing work of American musical theater -probably the finest of its kind. It never fails to make an impact, no matter what is done to it. It has been performed in opera houses and church basements; with full orchestra, a single piano, or any number of combinations in between; with a cast of thirty professionals or with eight amateurs doubling on all the parts. It is indestructible.
Artists
Mignon Dunn (Susan B. Anthony), Ashley Putnam (Angel More), Batyah Godfrey (Anne), G. Ives (Virgil T.), Linn Maxwell (Indiana Eliott), William Lewis (John [Quincy] Adams), Douglas Perry (Thaddeus), Philip Booth (Daniel), Joseph McKee (Chris the Citizen), Helen Vanni (Constance Fletcher)
Orchestra and Chorus of the Santa Fe Opera, Raymond Leppard
