An opera with no acts: 'Four Saints in Three Acts.' (by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson)

From: The Southern Review | Date: June 22, 1997| Author: Albright, Daniel | Copyright information

The opera 'Four Saints in Three Acts' by Gertrude Stein and Virgil Thomson represents a notable attempt to spatialize the temporal media of text and music. Stein's antinarrative text attempts to create a landscape that is empty, in which nothing happens. Stein's work suggests that the saints become a thinking landscape preoccupied mostly with the spatial arrangement of its elements. Without narrative to supply motion, the topographical mode becomes predominant. Virgil Thomson's music also lac...

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