Gertrude Stein was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris in 1903, and made France her home for the remainder of her life. She hosted a Paris salon, where the leading figures of modernism in literature and art, such as Pablo Picasso, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson and Henri Matisse, would meet.
Alice Babette Toklas was an American-born member of the Parisian avant-garde of the early 20th century, and the life partner of American writer Gertrude Stein.
Virgil Thomson was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera Lord Byron which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion".
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas is a book by Gertrude Stein, written in October and November 1932 and published in 1933. It employs the form of an autobiography authored by Alice B. Toklas, her life partner. In 1998, Modern Library ranked it as one of the 20 greatest English-language nonfiction books of the 20th century.
Robert Indiana was an American artist associated with the pop art movement.
Dialogues des Carmélites, FP 159, is an opera in three acts, divided into twelve scenes with linking orchestral interludes, with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc, completed in 1956. Poulenc wrote the libretto for his second opera after the work of the same name by Georges Bernanos. This is a fictionalized version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation.
Eva Jessye was an American conductor who was the first black woman to receive international distinction as a professional choral conductor. She is notable as a choral conductor during the Harlem Renaissance. She created her own choral group which featured widely in performance. Her professional influence extended for decades through her teaching as well. Her accomplishments in this field were historic for any woman. She collaborated in productions of groundbreaking works, directing her choir and working with Virgil Thomson and Gertrude Stein on Four Saints in Three Acts (1933), and serving as musical director with George Gershwin on his innovative opera Porgy and Bess (1935).
Four Saints in Three Acts is an opera composed in 1928 by Virgil Thomson, setting a libretto written in 1927 by Gertrude Stein. It contains about 20 saints and is in at least four acts. It was groundbreaking in form, content, and for its all-black cast, with singers directed by Eva Jessye, a prominent black choral director, and supported by her choir.
Lord Byron is an opera in three acts by Virgil Thomson to an original English libretto by Jack Larson, inspired by the historical character Lord Byron. This was Thomson's third and final opera. He wrote it on commission from the Ford Foundation for the Metropolitan Opera (Met), but the Met never produced the opera. The first performance was at Lincoln Center, New York City on April 20, 1972, by the music department of the Juilliard School with John Houseman as stage director, Gerhard Samuel as the conductor and Alvin Ailey as the choreographer. A performance of a revised version, by the composer, took place in 1985 with the New York Opera Repertory Theater.
Zerelda Gray Sanders Wallace was the First Lady of Indiana from 1837 to 1840, and a temperance activist, women's suffrage leader, and inspirational speaker in the 1870s and 1880s. She was a charter member of Central Christian Church, the first Christian Church in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her husband was David Wallace, the sixth governor of Indiana; Lew Wallace, one of her stepsons, became an American Civil War general and author.
Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale were an American two-piano ensemble; they were also authors and television cooking show hosts.
Alice Adams is a 1935 romantic drama film directed by George Stevens and starring Katharine Hepburn. It was made by RKO and produced by Pandro S. Berman. The screenplay was by Dorothy Yost, Mortimer Offner, and Jane Murfin. The film was adapted from the novel Alice Adams by Booth Tarkington. The music score was by Max Steiner and Roy Webb, and the cinematography by Robert De Grasse. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Actress.
Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (1938) is a libretto for an opera by the American modernist playwright and poet Gertrude Stein. The text has become a rite of passage for avant-garde theatre artists from the United States: La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, Judson Poets' Group, The Living Theatre, Richard Foreman, Robert Wilson, and The Wooster Group have all produced the piece.
Encompass New Opera Theatre is a professional opera company located in New York City which specializes in premiering new productions, and reviving 20th century operas by American and international composers. A member of Opera America, Encompass was founded in 1975 by Nancy Rhodes who remains the company's Artistic Director. Since its founding, Encompass has produced over 50 fully mounted operas with orchestra as well as staged readings of more than 150 new works.
27 is an opera by composer Ricky Ian Gordon and librettist Royce Vavrek in a prologue and five acts that explores the relationship of Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, and the salons that they hosted at their residence at 27 rue de Fleurus in Paris. The work was commissioned by Opera Theatre of Saint Louis for mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe. The full cast of five singers was featured on the cover of the June 2014 issue of Opera News. The opera premiered on June 14, 2014, in a production directed by James Robinson and conducted by Michael Christie at the Loretto-Hilton Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The world premiere was recorded by Albany Records.
Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary is a three-volume biographical dictionary published in 1971. Its origins lay in 1957 when Radcliffe College librarians, archivists, and professors began researching the need for a version of the Dictionary of American Biography dedicated solely to women.
William Horne was an American operatic tenor who, after World War II, performed with the New York City Opera. He was born in Manhattan, New York.
James Peyton Atherton Jr was an American tenor and artistic director. Classically trained, he went on to sing with numerous American opera companies. He also performed on stage in Europe.
