Virgil Thomson: The Mother of Us All
Poet-novelist Gertrude Stein was dying of cancer as she constructed this typically playful, nonlinear, but deadly earnest meditation on Susan B. Anthony in collaboration with composer Virgil Thomson. The result is a complex, even profound, cross section of Anthony's time, but it's also more delicate than Thomson and Stein's previous collaboration, the wacky, childlikeFour Saints in Three Acts. Sadly, this 1976 recording from the Santa Fe Opera shows whatMotheris like when it fails to take off. British conductor Raymond Leppard is hardly the sort to find the rustic humor in Thomson's quasi hymn tunes. While the cast headed by Mignon Dunn as Susan B. Anthony has lots of vocal riches, the singers' diction is as unclear as their sense of purpose.--David Patrick Stearns